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ianjmonk
ianjmonk
Participant
July 31, 2018
解決済み

Mail merge in InDesign?

  • July 31, 2018
  • 返信数 4.
  • 4973 ビュー

Hello,

I am working with a client that is trying to send several hundred personalized PDFs to their clients.

I used the data merge functionality in InDesign and the plugin from https://colecandoo.com/ to create the individual PDFs, but I'm not sure about the best way to distribute them. Is there a way to send the PDFs directly from InDesign? Is there a way to add PDFs to a mail merge in Word/Outlook?

Is the only alternative a third party application like pdfMachine.

Any guidance or recommendations would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Ian

    このトピックへの返信は締め切られました。
    解決に役立った回答 ianjmonk

    Thanks for the response, Colin!

    Definitely appreciate the scripts and InDesign support you're offering! I found the Data Merge to Unique Names script to be very helpful for what I was working on. You saved me a lot of time.

    Script or Plugin, it doesn't matter to me. As long as it gets the job done.

    Thanks again,

    Ian

    返信数 4

    Colin Flashman
    Community Expert
    Colin FlashmanCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 1, 2018

    Hi all, Colin from Colecandoo here, sorry I'm late to the conversation.

    As stated, my site (it's just me running it) has several javascripts rather than plug-ins but it's understood what was meant. Also, InDesign can do a style of mail merge, it's just called the Data Merge feature. To be fair, it doesn't have all of the features of Microsoft Word's mail merge feature, but I use it successfully for the campaigns that I need to create.

    As for distributing the files, perhaps that is a task for a bulk email manager such as Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor. I quickly found this about Mailchimp that may help:

    https://mailchimp.com/help/use-merge-tags-to-send-personalized-files/

    I know Adobe has a Marketing Cloud much like there is a Creative Cloud and Document Cloud, but I'm unfamiliar with the tools in that particular toolbox.

    If the answer wasn't in my post, perhaps it might be on my blog at colecandoo!
    ianjmonk
    ianjmonk作成者解決！
    Participant
    August 7, 2018

    Thanks for the response, Colin!

    Definitely appreciate the scripts and InDesign support you're offering! I found the Data Merge to Unique Names script to be very helpful for what I was working on. You saved me a lot of time.

    Script or Plugin, it doesn't matter to me. As long as it gets the job done.

    Thanks again,

    Ian

    Dov Isaacs
    Dov Isaacs
    Legend
    August 1, 2018

    There are third party industrial strength (albeit expensive) solutions that you should consider if you need to do such work in volume. Look at XMPie's uPrint products that are plug-ins to either desktop InDesign or InDesign server. Output from this plug-in in conjunction with InDesign is a special ISO standard variant of PDF known as PDF/VT-1. This flavor of PDF is exceptionally streamlined in terms of file size and performance when printing. Stay away from proprietary solutions as well as those based on PPML or PostScript!

              - Dov

    - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
    D
    Doc Maik
    Legend
    August 1, 2018

    I see. Still a script, not a plugin.

    D
    Doc Maik
    Legend
    August 1, 2018

    Mail merging isn't something ID is intended for and that's why such third party applications exist. Looking around this forum there are similar topics where one of them had a different approach to do this in Acrobat. You would then create one template in Indesign, export as PDF and let Acrobat plus a plugin do the work of data merging and sending the PDF via email.

    How to - Varibale Data in a PDF for mass email?

    P.S. What plugin from Colecandoo do you mean? They offer only scripts.

    ianjmonk
    ianjmonk作成者
    Participant
    August 1, 2018

    Thanks, Doc!

    I used the Data Merge to Unique Names plug-in.

    This let me export each page as a separate PDF with the client's first and last name as the file name. Pretty handy plug-in.

    I did look through the forums for a solution, but a lot of the responses were out-of-date. I guess I was hoping to find a more recent workaround or to see if Adobe had incorporated this functionality into InDesign.

    Cheers,

    Ian

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