Clients have no problem asking for the impossible, like 300 personalized invitations and nametags -- to be printed tomorrow. Thanks to an overlooked InDesign feature called Data Merge, you can make the impossible possible.

The recipient of this invitation will never know it took you just seconds to generate.

Italy-based trainer and designer Rufus Deuchler is an InDesign whiz. In this step-by-step how-to, he explains how easy it can be to create one InDesign template and fill it with text (like those 300 names) from a .txt or .csv file. It's like Microsoft Word mail merge, except you've got the benefit of InDesign's excellent text-composition engine and graphic features.

To download the sample files for the project and follow along, go to http://downloads.indesignmag.com/supportfiles/ACME_Cosmetics.zip. To download the step-by-step tutorial, just click the link "Automate_InDesign" and open the PDF file in your Web browser. You can also download the PDF to your machine for later viewing and printing.

To open the PDF, you'll need Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader. To download Acrobat Reader click below:

.

To learn how to configure your browser for viewing PDF files, see the Adobe Reader tech support page.