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julieanneines
Participant
May 31, 2019
Answered

InDesign Data Merge Not Working - Mac and Windows Tested

  • May 31, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 3137 views

Our team is reporting problems with trying to perform a data merge with the latest version of InDesign. We have just one record in the .csv file. When we select "Create Merged Document" nothing seems to happen. This happens on both Mac and Windows systems. We've tried trashing preferences, but that is ineffective. Any workarounds? Advice?

- Thanks!

    Correct answer Eadaoin24309232kfv8

    Thanks! Saving as a tab delimited.txt file in excel and closing the excel application worked for me. I always have problems with this and I usually save it as a .csv that is not UTF 8, but that always works, but not this time. Your solution did however.

    2 replies

    T
    tyler.vtnz
    Participant
    October 5, 2021

    For some reason I just unlocked a layer that I had (background elements that don't change), and clicked merge document and it worked? Very bizzare.

      N
      Noah3440438548sj
      Participant
      February 20, 2024

      This actually worked for me as well, 3 years later

      J
      Community Expert
      Jeffrey_SmithCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      May 31, 2019

      One record, does this include a row for the header?

      Are there any unusual characters used in the header?

      Make sure there are no spaces in the beginning of a header entry.

      Try saving as a tab-deliminated .txt file instead of .csv

        J
        julieanneinesAuthor
        Participant
        May 31, 2019

        It does include a row for the header. The only "unusual" character used in one of the headers is the "@" symbol to designate an image field. The CSV file seems to work OK for another document with the same merge fields, so I'm wondering whether the file is corrupted in some way.

        We'll try saving as a tab-delimited .txt file instead of a .csv for the problem file and report back.

        Omar.Fathy
        Community Expert
        Omar.FathyCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        May 31, 2019

        I think you know that the first step to make Data Merge is to Select Data source,

        then select text box in the page and select the field from the Data Merge panel.
        Then press on the Create Merged Document or from the panel menu you can choose it.

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        Did all these steps working well except the last one ?

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