Inspiring

Answered

Indesign Data Merge

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
March 13, 2023
2 replies
7591 views

Hi,

I am having probelms data merging multiple records per page. I will attach pics of the files.

My TXT. file doesn't have " " inverted commas; does this matter?

I have saved Excel file as Tab-delimted Text file (TXT). See attached files. But Indesign is not reading my Days fields (i.e. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc) properly, as well as my Dates of the week.

When I go to create merged documnet I am stopped by error message, "Cannot Create Merged Document Because no placeholders are present." (see attached). What have I done wrong here?

And is there a way to insert multiple TXT. files into the one Indesign document as I have multiple Master pages with Multiple placeholder text. Or should I just create a new Indesign doc for each Master page and corresponding TXT date merge file?

Thanks so much!

How to

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Mario Fritsche

Thanks Peter and Mario. If this other way is easier than perhaps I should try that.
I have PM'd you Mario for guidance, thanks for the offer. 👍

Absolutley. Which is waht I was trying to say in my first response. I think I misinterpreted what you were saying.

By @Peter Spier

This structure of the table can help.

Mario Fritsche

Legend

The way Excel is set up, data merging will not work. For this, the structure on the page must be the same, but it is not, because the calendar week is at the top and the weekdays at the bottom.
I would not go the way of a data merge, but either by inserting the data (for this the Excel must be adapted) or a script. If you need help, please contact me via private message.

---Mario

Peter Spier

Community Expert

Organization of the spreadsheet is not required to match the layout except that the spreadsheet needs to have a field for every value to be merged. How those are arranged on the document page is entirely up to the designer.

There are other methods of producing this layout that might be simpler than data merge. Simply placing two different text files, one for the page headers, and one for the day numbers, for example, with appropriate styles and keep options to assure that each entry is placed into a new frame, but this still requires creation of the data files.

Mario Fritsche

Legend

The layout and structure of a data table makes sense, as it should facilitate the work. In this case, Excel would have to be created in the form "One row = one week", for example.

---Mario

Peter Spier

Community Expert

The only way that layout will work is if you modify your data set to merge one record per page. You will need to add a column for each separate day, so you will need columns for Weeks, Date From, Date To, Day 1, Date 1, Day 2, Date 2 ... Day 7, Date 7, then add the extra field headers for the seven weekdays to your Master/Parent page. You shouold wind up with 52 records for one year.

That being said, there's really no need to merge the names of the days since those are the same on every page. Just enter them as static tex on your Master/Parent Page.

Naomi5DAFAuthor

Inspiring

Whoops, of course I can just write the days of week (Monday, Tuesday) on master page. Thanks. I might try this other technique you've both mentioned.

But if I was using data merge, would I add anymore columns than what I've already got? I would delete weekday column.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

To do data merge you will need a column for each unique piece of data on the page (you can use the same column to put the same data multiple times by putting the field placeholder in multiple positions), so you need columns for start each field of the header information and seven columns for the days.

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