Variable Excel Doc & InDesign

[wøøfie]

Hi All!

I'm on a fairly large project with a fast turnaround time:

135 business cards divided into four groups

Each (and its fields) needs to link to a variable excel doc from Survey Monkey

Each needs to link to a photo (.tif)

I have zero experience linking variable excel docs and images to InDesign. Can any of you recommend a resource for getting up to speed quickly? Or offer an outline here?

I'm used to designing in Illustrator and then dropping those designs into InDesign, adding the appropriate text last. With the workflow above, is there a way I can still do this or do I need to design fully inside InDesign?

Thank you guys for any help!

[Colin Flashman]

Sounds like you need InDesign's Data Merge feature. You won't be able to use the Excel file itself, but you can save the Excel file as a tab delimited txt file or comma separated variable file (CSV) and InDesign's Data Merge feature will be able to deal with it. Adobe's help site does give a good explanation of how to use it:

Merge data to create form letters, envelopes, or mailing labels in Adobe InDesign

There's also a plethora of youtube tutorials on the topic, and many of them feature merges that feature images. There are paid tutorials that are worth watching on Lynda/Linked-in Learning and Skillshare.