#Indesign cs6 data merge how to
#Indesign cs6 data merge pdf

What you’re talking about is database publishing: Taking data from a database or spreadsheet and making it pretty in InDesign. We have an Excel database of all the information, but are just wondering if there is a faster way to do this kind of layout in either Indesign or Illustrator. This will generate all the PDFs and should be complete within a few minutes.I am working on a building signage project, and one of the challenge is to layout hundreds of room identification signs at the same size, but all the room numbers / room names and pictograms are different, and we need to keep them at precisely the same position. Pick anything that makes sense.įrom the batch_convert.jsxbin popup, select ‘Source Format’ = ‘IDML’.įrom the batch_convert.jsxbin popup, click ‘OK’ button. This is the directory where you want the PDFs to be placed. It’ll look like ‘outputXXXXXXX’.įrom the batch_convert.jsxbin popup, select your 'Output Folder'. This will be the folder generated by your python script from step 3. In InDesign, run script ‘batch_convert.jsxbin'įrom the batch_convert.jsxbin popup, select your ‘Input Folder'. In Terminal, enter 'python3 batch_idml_editor.py' (success = Terminal prints out each patient file, failure = Terminal displays error). Open Terminal and ‘cd' to the directory containing the IDML, CSV, and python script. Verify python file has the right IDML path and CSV path. This will take all the IDMLs generated from the python script and then automatically convert them into PDFs. The batch_convert.jsxbin script is available here. Our python script and an example is available here. Using that python script and the batch_convert.jsxbin InDesign script we're now able to automatically generate each PDF, uniquely named based on the CSV data. Message += ', ' + this.numPages + ' pages, ' + csvData.length() + ' rows).' Ī colleague of mine ended up creating a custom python script. Var message = 'The number of pages per row is not an integer (' + pagesPerRecord I've not tested this, but it looks straightforward (other than the parsing of the CSV, which came from someone on stackoverflow and I didn't look over in detail).įor the record, here is the script: var CSV = function (data, delimiter)

There is user input for text to prefix and/or suffix the output file names.

#Indesign cs6 data merge pdf

It counts the total number of pages in the PDF and divides by the total number of records in the CSV in order to calculate the number of pages per individual PDF, then iterates through the document, extracting pages as it goes. It takes the CSV file as an input (said CSV must have a column named 'filename' containing the individual name for the extracted PDF. The workflow this script is set up for is the Data Merge > Export PDF, which as you noted spits out a single, massive PDF.

What’s the best path to automate this via a combination of Data Merge, Scripts, Actions as necessary?

#Indesign cs6 data merge how to

Old scripts, 404 pages, certain functionality missing, and no step by step walkthrough to figure out how to use said script.įound this script but not sure how to set it up + use it. I’ve searched around on the forums but it has been a bear to figure it out. Data Merge to Export PDF this creates one PDF with every person in.Data Merge that generates multiple InDesign docs great but how do IĪutomate them to then export to PDF + uniquely name the file based on.Which PDF to send to which person (report_john_doe.pdf). Filename for each PDF should contain a single person’s name to know.

Each PDF will be a 10 page document for that person.

I want to have a PDF for each person (100 pdfs).

InDesign document with multiple pages (10 pages).

I’m looking to automate data merge to create multiple PDFs per row of data (each PDF would have 10 pages) and with each PDF being named uniquely based on a column in the data.