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Is this possible?

New Here ,
Jul 01, 2010 Jul 01, 2010

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hey all,

i have created a Catalogue template in InDesign CS3. Since i have completed the template, the number of products has grown to be alot more than i was expecting.

I have an excel spreadsheet with all part numbers, descriptions, image name etc.

Im wondering if its possible to somehow import all the data from the spreadsheet (or database if its easier) and place in a pre defined place in an InDesign document?

Typing in a Part number and automatically filling in a descrption and image would be perfect!

thanks in advance!

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Beginner , Jul 01, 2010 Jul 01, 2010

Hi Outlaw, and welcome to the community!

This sounds very much like what I'm trying to do right now. (Actually just came back to it after about a year on the afterburner!)

After spending much time researching how to do this I have two possibilities for you:

1. If you have a fixed number of items going on fixed locations on a page then you should look at doing XML. Look at the 6-up business card XML tutorial for Indesign in A Designer's Guide to Adobe Indesign and XML". (I personally found preparing

...

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New Here ,
Jul 01, 2010 Jul 01, 2010

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If you are working on a Mac, try our VPC product at www.publishingtools4u.com.

It is build for questions like this 🙂

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 01, 2010 Jul 01, 2010

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Hi Outlaw, and welcome to the community!

This sounds very much like what I'm trying to do right now. (Actually just came back to it after about a year on the afterburner!)

After spending much time researching how to do this I have two possibilities for you:

1. If you have a fixed number of items going on fixed locations on a page then you should look at doing XML. Look at the 6-up business card XML tutorial for Indesign in A Designer's Guide to Adobe Indesign and XML". (I personally found preparing the XML file very labour-intensive and for my purposes it did not work - but it does do the graphic import and it might just be perfect for you!)

2. If you have a variable number of item codes per item OR variable white space in a document then you may want to write a script. What I'm doing is looking at writing a script which imports a delimited file from Excel, converts some "columns" into anchored text frames (one of which is a graphic) and format the remainder of the text. Then I can autoflow the text frame into the remainder of the pages.

Let us know which way works for you!

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 01, 2010 Jul 01, 2010

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Oh and Outlaw, you might want to check out this post dealing with catalogues and scripting - it's my original post from a year ago. Check out Peter's pseudocode in the last message.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 02, 2010 Jul 02, 2010

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g'day

i'd also recommend "A Designer's Guide to Adobe Indesign and XML" which kevin suggested but would suggest chapter seven of the book which deals with catalogues.  this book is my go-to resource at work as IMHO there is no other resource which mixes XML and indesign... at least that i have seen. get the book, follow the chapter and do the exercise, and it can be seen how to apply the techniques to a project like you have.

If the answer wasn't in my post, perhaps it might be on my blog at colecandoo!

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