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Nina31724321qd6o
New Participant
August 22, 2023
Answered

Data merge with symbol font? PLEASE HELP!

  • August 22, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 1478 views

I am researching how to best create a large amount of signs with help of InDesign Data Merge. I'd like to have and icon (like left/right arrow) to accompany the text of the sign. I've set up test files but get stuck when it comes to adding symbols. 

 

My thought was to use Font Awesome, Noto Symbol or similar to add the needed symbol. I've tried adding the symbol as a glyph into the .csv and then have a paragraph style for the symbol in the target document with the correct font. I only get broken glyphs (the box with and x).

 

Any idea on how to solve this!? 

 

Importing images works, and is a backup option.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer m1b

    You should be able to just copy and paste the glyph from the web page example you gave us.

     

    And, as Robert mentioned, you must save the csv file encoded as UTF-8. 

    2 replies

    Robert at ID-Tasker
    Robert at ID-Tasker
    Brainiac
    August 22, 2023

    Tag your character between, for example, "#$#" - #$#k#$#" - then just use GREP to change it with CharStyle.

     

    (#$#)(.+)(#$#)

     

    $2 (plus CharStyle) 

     

    P
    Peter Kahrel
    Community Expert
    August 22, 2023

    The dollar is a special character in regular expressions (stands for 'end of input/paragraph). Better to use a character that has no meaning in regexes, such as &, @, #, %

      Robert at ID-Tasker
      Robert at ID-Tasker
      Brainiac
      August 22, 2023

      Right, or it can always be escaped. 

       

      And then it probably would be better to differentiate opening and closing tags - %#...#%.

       

      m1b
      m1b
      Community Expert
      August 22, 2023

      Hi @Nina31724321qd6o, one approach could be to put the font symbol characters into your csv file, eg:

      SYMBOL,TEXT
C,The quick brown
F,fox jumps over
B,the lazy dog

      And then use a Paragraph Style with a nested style that applies a Character Style to the first character. (Or even simpler: just manually format the first field placeholder with the symbol font!) See my attached demo files. Also there are plenty of other ways to go about this.

      - Mark

       

      N
      Nina31724321qd6oAuthor
      New Participant
      August 22, 2023

      Thank you! Your example works fine. But still, when I try it with Font Awesome for example, I get errors. Maybe I didn't understand your instruction correctly. How should I add this glyph, for example: 

      https://fontawesome.com/icons/arrow-right-long?f=classic&s=solid

       

      As unicode? Or paste the glyph? Another way? 

       

      Thanks again for taking your time to help me!!

      Robert at ID-Tasker
      Robert at ID-Tasker
      Brainiac
      August 22, 2023

      As this is two byte glyph - f178 - you need to save your CSV file with Unicode coding.

       

      Then you need style placeholder - place in the InDesign where you want it to be placed - with this font. 

       

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