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InDesign How-To: Automate This!
Design hundreds of InDesign files overnight? You can do it -- without even staying late -- if you use the built-in Data Merge.
Written by Rufus Deuchler on July 12, 2006
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This article is taken from InDesign Magazine," Issue 11. To buy this issue or subscribe to InDesign Magazine," click here.
Clients have no problem asking for the impossible, like 300 personalized invitations and name tags -- to be printed tomorrow. Thanks to an overlooked InDesign feature called Data Merge, you can make the impossible possible.
Italy-based trainer, designer, and Adobe evangelist 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.
The recipient of this invitation will never know it took you just seconds to generate:
To download the sample files for the project and follow along, go to http://www.creativepro.com/files/downloads/ACME_Cosmetics.zip.
To download the step-by-step tutorial, just click the link "Automate_InDesign."
To open the PDF, you'll need Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader. We highly recommend Adobe Reader 7.0 and above to view this PDF. Download the latest Acrobat Reader here.
To learn how to configure your browser for viewing PDF files, see the Adobe Reader tech support page.
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The PDF can not download
The tutorial pdf can't download.
Re "The PDF can not download"
The PDF link is correct, so perhaps your difficulty lies in your Web browser's settings. Have you tried right-clicking on the link and choosing "Save Link As'?
Terri Stone
Editor in Chief, CreativePro.com
thanks
This is just what I needed, when I needed it. Thanks so much.
Tanya
www.missdetails.com
How do you make...
That image box with the text tag in there? Is the text "<>" necessary?
nevermind.
I figured it out. You get the by dragging the product image from the data merge window onto your picture box.
HELP
I want to import images from an excel spreadsheet. I have typed the image path every way possible. Tried typing a path for several different images in different locations on my MacBook. I even called Apple to make sure I identified the correct path. I always end up with a message saying the path is not linked to an image. All my data imports exactly as intended just not images. I even labeled the image column starting with an apostrophe and @ symbol. Don't know what I'm doing wrong.