Importing CSV file to indesign

[SunflowerCreativeMedia]

Hi, I'm designing an 8 page  booklet, that will be a list of artists who have entered an art show. I have gone thru the tutorials, and gotten the import to work, but it puts one record on each page. I have checked my settings in the CREATE MERGED DOCUMENTS dialogue box. In the RECORDS TAB I have all records clicked. but when I go to MULTIPLE RECORD LAYOUT, everything is greyed out, and there is an statement on the top that reads:  THESE OPTIOS ARE DISABLED BECAUSE SIGNLE RECORD IS SELECTED FOR RECORDS PER DOCUMENT PAGE. I fear this is a bug, or does anyone have a workaround for this?  I've attached screenshots. I'm using Indesign 14.0.1 CC   Thank you for your help.

Elaine

[SJRiegel]

Your starting document should have only one page, and only one instance of the merge on that page. If you have more than one page, that is likely the reason you cannot choose Multiple Items per page.

From that one page, you will use the settings in Multiple item merge to choose the positioning of your records on the pages, and InDesign will generate all of the pages that you need.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS · Accepted solution]

Just to clarify, you want to use Data Merge and not bring the records in as a table, correct?

If so, check out this link:

Data Merge: Cannot get multiple records per page

[SunflowerCreativeMedia]

I'm not sure what you mean by a table,  but I'm wanting a list with tabs  First and Last Name, Name of Artwork, Price

I would not have thought of starting a new document. Here I set up an 8 page document and was working on other pages, such as the cover and inside cover info. So I started a new document, and tried it again, twice. This time, I was able to select multiple records on a page. But it still made on page for each record.

Sorry guys, I'm an experience indesign user, but I've been designing things without importing text.

Elaine

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

If you look at the file in a spreadsheet program like Excel, it would look like a table, with each bit of information in a cell and each new artist on a new row.

However, if you simply want a list of tabular data (name, art, price), just File>Place it as text, and adjust the tabs as needed. You don't need data merge for this. (Unless I'm not understanding what you are trying to do...)

[SunflowerCreativeMedia]

Thank you, I got the data merge to work, and see that it puts each record in a new text box. Not what I THOUGHT I wanted. I have played with exporting it every which way, and regardless, I will have to take out spaces, put in tabs, put in soft returns etc, etc. We are capping the show at 200 pieces of art, so that is a lot of editing. One on side, I believe I will have at least a week to work on this, on the other side, even if the data merge makes individual text boxes, that might be just fine, as long as I do as much of the editing for font, size, etc in the spread sheet before I do the merge. 

[SJRiegel]

eap_designs  wrote

that might be just fine, as long as I do as much of the editing for font, size, etc in the spread sheet before I do the merge. 

If you set up your initial InDesign document using paragraph styles, you will be able to do a certain amount of adjustment to size, font, etc by editing the styles. In either case, these are not things to adjust in the spread sheet; you would apply them to the placeholders in your InDesign document.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

Can you upload an image of what the final job should look like? I'm not sure if you should be using data merge from your descriptions.

[ideasgal]

I’m with you, Elaine!

[mwaksm]

Hi, I'm working on a similar list booklet. I want my InDesign final document to have a single text box that flows, and I want everything that I import to use tabs to create the columns. What I've found to almost work perfectly is to export my original spreadsheet as a TSV rather than a CSV. You can place a TSV as a link in an InDesign text box. Hopefully this helps.

[DanSyn]

There IS NO .tsv option in the pop-down menu?  LoL  What are you talking about, a .TSV file? I do not even see that as an available option to choose?