Some Data Merge Fields Not Populating Correctly

[amyrip]

Hello Adobe friends.

I've created a data merge document to create several translations of the same poster. When I click through the previews, the first few show up correctly but then several others have issues such as populating with text from cells other than the designated cell it should be pulling from or just no text showing up at all. I've checked and double checked my source file and everything is where it should be.

Here are a few screenshots of the issue.

Data fields before being populated: 

Data fields populating correctly:

Data fields populating incorrectly:

Screenshots of source file (this is before exporting as a .txt file):

I really appreciate any help you can offer!

[DBLjan]

Hallo Amy,

es sieht ja alles soweit korrekt aus. Wenn es aber um die Funktionalität der neueren InDesign-Versionen und die Patch-Historie geht, kann ich dir auf meiner CC18 nicht helfen, wenn da etwas Programmseitig verbuggt ist.

Aber als Idee, weil ich beim DataMerge auch oft drüber stolpere, doch nochmal ein Blick in deine Quelle. Wenn ich zB längere Texte in Excel extern bekomme, nutzen User gerne den manuellen Zeilenumbruch (iwas Alt/Ctrl/Shift+Enter in Excel). Wenn. ich für InDesign die Datei anfüttere als Tabstop-getrennte Textdatei (.txt), dann verwuselt der Umbruch die Zuordnung, ab Vorkommen. So sieht das bei dir aus: erst funktionierts, dann iwann kommen Fehler.

Aber genaueres kann man aus deinem Excel-Screenshot nicht erkennne, weil besagte Fehler-Stelle nicht mit drauf ist.

[patMorita]

hi amy

Wie dbljan schon sagte liegt das wahrscheinlich an fehlerhaften Daten - nicht in der Excel aber in der CSV.

Wenn du auf dem Mac arbeitest versuch mal MyDataMerge. Die free Version erlaubt zwar nur 40 Datensätze aber du siehst schnell wo der Fehler liegt. 

MyDataMerge importiert sowohl Excel als auch CSV. Teste einfach beide - geht das Excel und die CSV nicht weißt du woran es liegt. 

Ps: Das Tool ist von einem deutschen kleinen Entwickler Team, recht unbekannt aber ich kenne nichts besseres zu diesem Preis Leistungsverhältnis.

[amyrip]

Thank you very much! I will give it a try. We were able to discover that the issue was stemming from the German characters. (Apparently when you do a data merge some of the German characters can break up the file.) Maybe because this is a German developer it will be able to solve our problem.

[amyrip]

Thank you very much for your detailed answer! Based on your answer, we tried to separate the fields using commas before exporting as a .txt file instead (replacing all of the existing commas in the text with @@) but we didn't have any luck with that either. However, we were able to figure out that the problem is caused by the fact that some German characters break up the file for some unknown reason. We are going to try MyDataMerge, as comDesignSHi suggested. If that doesn't work, we will probably just enter in the German translations manually since our project deadline is coming up soon.

[DBLjan]

Hello Amy,

i found something about CSV, Excel and german umlauts. Maybe this could help you getting the csv/txt to export the right UTF.

http://www.openforis.org/support/questions/279/wrong-characters-display-when-exporting-files-to-csv-...

[Laubender]

Hi Amy,

can you make the template together with the source available through download from Dropbox or a similar service?

I think we can help, if we are able to have a look at the files.

Thanks,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[amyrip]

Hi Uwe,

Thank you for offering your help! Unfortunately, these templates are not mine to share, as they belong to the organization that I work for. We were able to discover the source of the problem though, as I mentioned to DBLjan and comDesignSHi.

I greatly appreciate your help!

Thanks,

Amy

[Laubender]

Hi Amy,

what you can try:

Save the data source text file with UTF-16 LE using Windows Editor application.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[amyrip]

Thanks! Yes, we tried that, but unfortunately we haven't had any luck with that either.

[Laubender]

Hi Amy,

I wouldn't do this with a CSV file as data source.

The alternative: Tab delimited text file with UTF-8 or UTF-16 LE encoding.

What should work: Open the Excel original file with Excel and copy/paste its contents to a text file ( Windows Editor ).

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )