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Question

Streamline Printing Process

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
January 6, 2021
2 replies
1568 views

Hi evertyone

I am looking for guidance of a issue I am trying to improve

Everyday I run receipts, there are 30 odd 1 page receipts that are set up in individual word documents, on a normal day we are required to print anywhere between 100 and 3000 receipts. Currently we need to open up every receipt individually to print them through mail merge each connecting to a seperate .csv file. I want to improve this process.

Is there a way to set up an InDesign document where I can include all 30 receipts in one document, (maybe using msater pages), and then using mail merge connecting to one .csv file which contains a field that defines which recept that person should get

e.g. the file would have

Field 1 Field 2 Field 3

Name Address Receipt

Ms Sample 1 Sample St Xmas20

Mr Sample 2 Sample St Tax20

Therefore record one would receive receipt Xmas20 etc etc and I could print all in one go

Appreciate any help on this, if you would like more infromaiton please let me know

Have a great day

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Jens Trost

Inspiring

Hi @tobyb71827903
I'm not sure I understand your problem correctly... what exactly isn't working for you with the InDesign data merge function?

At the end of the day create a merged document, where you can place multiple instances on one page (see "Merge records" in the user guide).

T

tobyb71827903Author

Participating Frequently

Hi Jens Trost

The InDesign merge is working, I have an understanding of how this works. However, I want to see if the merge can do more advanced work

To be honest I am not sure how to clarify the issue more than I have already

As you can see in the image below I have two master templates set up, I then want to connect to the data via data merge and using Column C below, I want to print the documents where if receipt = 'Xmas20' use master 'Xmas-master' and if receipt = "Tax20" use master 'Tax-master' as the content

brian_p_dts

Community Expert

Hide the document master information on a hidden layer on the page, with a text frame called "master-info". I assume these are all single-page entries for the merge.

After executing the merge, the general idea for a script is:

var pages = app.documents[0].pages;

for (var i = 0; i < pages.length; i++) {

pages[i].appliedMaster = app.documents[0].masterSpreads.itemByName(pages[i].textFrames.itemByName("master-info").contents);

}

T

tacoeater

Participating Frequently

Hello tobyb71827903,

Currently we need to open up every receipt individually to print them through mail merge each connecting to a seperate .csv file.

Can you expand on this a little more?

So you open each word document? and what copy and paste into a csv? or is the csv what is generated? if this is the case is the csv 1 per receipt?

T

tobyb71827903Author

Participating Frequently

Hi

Yes, of course, when we come to receipting we run an export from our database. So at the end of our day when the work is finished we export receipts which generates 30 separate .csv files, one relating to each receipt. These .csv files only include those people who require that receipt. So if on that day only one person’s requires receipt Xmas20 that .csv file will only contain that one record. This also prints a count of how many people should get each receipt for cross checking purposes. We then have to open up each word document one at a time, go through the regular steps that words prompts you for, before printing the documents.

Understandably this takes a fair amount of time with 30 different documents and word is prone to loosing connections.

Every month or two we have a new receipt so what is now 30 receipts will be say 40 by the end of the year and so on. We have the same issue across half a dozen projects so you can imagine the time that is spent each day printing the files.

In a perfect solution I would like to be able to just export one .csv file containing all records and using a flag print the appropriate receipt, that is contained in one document/file

Hope this clears things up

T

tacoeater

Participating Frequently

So just to clear this up. You can't export one csv? but infact have to export them all individually? Which is why this current process is so painful?

So if could could combine the CSVs in an automated process this would save you a lot of time? Or if indesign could combine all the CSVs in one document that would also save you a lot of time?

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