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J
Jana Jarecki
Participant
April 15, 2020
Question

Indesign Data Merge (Datenzusammenführung) breaks German Umlaut (ä, ö, ü) despite UTF-8

  • April 15, 2020
  • 5 replies
  • 5085 views

Hi everybody,

 

The Problem:

Although data merge correctly reads a tab-separated text file, it breaks German Umlaute (ä, ö, ü) that were read in. This seems to be a common problem without a solution. In the original text the Umlaute are correct, after merging into Indesign they are broken. This seems to be a real bug.

 

Solutions that I have tried:

  • Encode the file as UTF-8 - not working after data merge
  • Encode the file as UTF-16 (breaks the new line characters, not working)
  • All possible data import options, following the suggestion here  (Unicode, ASCII) - not working
  • Use csv (not working)

 

This seems like an impossible problem. How can I get this done?

 

Specs

Indesign 15.0.2 x64

Windows 10

 

 

Cheers

Jana

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

L
leovisualmente
Participant
December 13, 2022

Ok i working from my macbook and i had the same issue, after trying all of the comments below, i kinda find the way that worked for me:

  1. Open a white file in text editor
  2. Copy the cells from google sheets and paste it as plain text
  3. Save it as unicode utf 16
  4. In indesign in the data merge settings choose unicode PC

    Hope this also helps!
    M
    Community Expert
    Manan JoshiCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 13, 2022

    Hi @leovisualmente,

    Based on my interaction with various users on the forum UTF-16 BE encoding has been reported to work fine.

    -Manan

    -Manan
      amriphoto
      amriphoto
      Inspiring
      October 14, 2021

      Just in case this pops up for someone having the same issue (it just did for me).

      The hint regarding the source file text being the issue made me think.
      I copied filenames from the finder (I'm on a mac) into a spreadsheet and saved that as a csv. That gave me the above mentioned problems (ö became o?).
      So I manually tried to type öäüß into a cell, and that worked. That made me remember I sometimes copy text into a simple text editor to remove the formatting. So I just copied all the cells (you can copy all at once) , pasted them into the built-in text editor on my mac. Then I copied them within the text editor again, and pasted it back into the spreadsheet (again, all at once). Suddenly it all worked.

      So to sum things up in case you are confused about my text above:

      1. Copy the cells from your spreadsheet (all at once)
      2. Paste them into a text editor
      3. Copy them again in the text editor (all at once)
      4. Paste them over the old cells in the spreadsheet
      W
      williamveder
      Participant
      August 18, 2022

      The easiest solution for me was to copy the table (from Google Sheets in my case) completely into the clipboard and then paste it into TextEdit (MAC) unformatted. There you can save the already tabstopped table as ASCII TXT (select in the settings). Works flawlessly and super fast with InDesign.

        W
        williamveder
        Participant
        August 18, 2022

        Not ASCII but MAC OS Roman.

        L
        Community Expert
        LaubenderCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        April 15, 2020

        Hi Jana,

        the issue lies in the source text file. Did you recieve it from a client?

        Can you make a sample available? A download link from Dropbox or a similar service?

        I'd like to have a look with Notepad++ . Think, we can correct this and convert it to a working UTF-8 file.

         

        Regards,
        Uwe Laubender

        ( ACP )

          P
          patMorita
          Inspiring
          April 19, 2020

          Hi Jana,

          this is a common issue with client side delivered files.

          Instead of trying to reformat, resave or handing guidelines to our clients we switched to MyDataMerge, an App for macOS (only) with a drag and drop interface (Indesign layout + Excel database or CSV) If you're on that plattform i'd definetely give it a try.

          Developed by a german team (as far as i know - it has a german translation), imports excels, exports linebreaks, handles almost every encoding. It basically does all the (annoying) things for you in the background and you can focus on work.

           

          edit: here's the link https://mydatamerge.com/

           

          J
          Jana JareckiAuthor
          Participant
          April 15, 2020

          Hi there, thanks for the quick reply.

          I have attached a screenshot to my original post.

           

          I have tried all possible encodings in Indesign without success, the encodings include ASCII, Unicode, and Shift-JIS.

           

          The characters are transformed as follows: ü becomes ü, ö becomes Ã¶, ß becomes ÃŸ.

           

           

          J
          Jana JareckiAuthor
          Participant
          April 15, 2020

          Let me add:

          UTF-16 LE works with respect to the Umlaute without mojibake (fantastic term), but Indesign then fails to recognize the line breaks, i.e. the import itself fails

          T
          Test Screen Name
          Legend
          April 15, 2020

          So you get the wrong characters? (This is called mojibake). UTF-8 should be a good choice. What encoding do you choose in InDesign, and what characters does it set for a particular accented character?

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