Error: The selected data source has one or more empty field names

[neehan]

Hi there, 

I am opening up my InDesign files from 2011 and all seems to be in order. I am able to data merge the data source that I had already loaded into InDesign back in 2011. 

However, when I "Select Data Source" and select the SAME text file, I get the following error:

"The selected data source has one or more empty field names. Please fix the file or select another file."

I've tried all the files that used to work, new files, copy/pasted files, to no avail. I've also tried copying and pasting just the data into a new excel spreadsheet and that hasn't worked either. I am running InDesign 15.0.3.

Any thoughts?

Thanks so much,

Neehan

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Double-check the following:

A bit obvious, but check for missing field title/header on a column.

Text, including spaces, outside of the data area or unsupported hidden characters. (A good way to check this is to open the CSV or tab-delimited file in a text-only program and check for extrenious tabular data. I suggest Notepad++ for Windows and BBEdit for Mac.)

[neehan]

Thank you for the quick reply. 

I just came on here to say I was able to solve the problem!

When I clicked Select Data Source then selected the file, I checked the Show Import Options box. In that window, I changed the default ASCII encoding to UNICODE. 

Thanks!

Neehan

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

That would probably fall into the "unsupported" characters category.

[neehan]

I was wrong, my solution didn't work! It didn't give me an error message sure, but it also didn't update the file. I'm going to try Notepad ++ now and see. 

[neehan · Accepted solution]

I found the source of the problem! In the old data merge file, the image column is denoted by @Image and the image itself has a semi-colon in front of it:

Name @Image

Neehan :Neehan.jpg

But the new way to do it is simply:

Name @Image

Neehan Neehan.jpg

So that's it! Thanks again for your help!

Neehan