Learn how to work with Data Merge in InDesign to import large amounts of data and create files with varying variables within the same design. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to import data from a CSV file, manipulate various variables, and preview the final product before exporting.
Key Insights
- Data Merge in InDesign allows for the importation and manipulation of large amounts of data such as names and addresses to create multiple variations of a single design.
- You can import data from CSV files into InDesign. Each CSV column is defined by a comma, allowing for the easy categorization of data such as business names, first names, last names, and addresses.
- InDesign allows for a preview of the final product including how the imported data will appear in the design. You can also adjust and modify the data format and design before exporting the final product.
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In this video, we're going to be working with Data Merge. Data Merge gives us the opportunity to import lots of names and addresses or other materials and create files for each of those different variables.
Rather than creating a new postcard for each individual, this allows us to export multiple of the same design but with different variables. So let's actually put this into work. We'll go to Window, and let's open up from Utilities at the bottom, Data Merge.
Here we can see that we have our three Data Merge elements, and let's move them to the bottom right under Color and Stroke. We'll then open up Data Merge, and from here we now need to import the data that we'll be utilizing. If we open up our main folder, we'll see that we have both a CSV and an Excel sheet.
If we look at the Excel sheet, we'd see that we have multiple tabs, and each one has names, last names, addresses, and businesses, like a business may collect information of people. In addition, if we open up the CSV file, which is one way that we can export the Excel spreadsheet, but they're all separated by commas rather than columns. In this case we have all the businesses in the first area, then a comma, then the first name, comma, last name, and so on.
InDesign is able to use a CSV file to import data. So let's close this out, and we'll actually import it. To do this, we're going to click on the right lines on the top of Data Merge, and go to Select Data Source.
From here, we'll go into Domus Interior Design, and the only readable file that we can utilize is our domuscontacts.csv. We'll click Open, and right here we can see that we've got the first column, which defines what's in each comma column. In order to actually utilize this, we're going to go into the top here, and let's highlight Business Name. With Business Name highlighted, we can now select Business, and right here we'll see that we have Business, and this will be imported by the actual data.
Let's hit ENTER, and we can remove the rest of these here, hitting the Delete key. Next, let's add our first name, clicking on it, and then we'll add last name. We'll hit ENTER again, we'll then add our address line 1, hit ENTER, add address line 2, hit ENTER, and add address line 3. Here we now have the format for the data that we're going to add, but let's actually see a preview of this.
We can check Preview here, and we'll see what this actually looks like. This looks pretty good. We've got our business, our first and last name, the address, the second line, and our city and state.
In addition, if we look at the name here, we haven't actually added a space between, so let's uncheck Preview, and we're just going to add a space right between first name and last name. Hitting the space bar, we'll click Preview, and we'll see that we now have a space between the first and last name. In addition, we can also stylize this while highlighting the actual details of it.
So, for example, if we want the business name to be Bold, we'll select this business, and we'll go from Chivo Regular to Chivo Bold. If we want to add a little space after the first and last name, we can also do this. We'll go to our Properties panel, and let's go to Space After, and we're just going to space it out a little more.
Finally, let's select all of it, and we'll center the paragraph. That way it's nice and centered within our postcard. Going back to Data Merge now, we'll see that if we uncheck Preview, we've made these modifications to the preview, but it applies to the entire format.
In addition, we can also go through, and I'll click outside here, and we can preview all of the names. So, clicking the right arrow, we can look through, and as we look through here, there's a couple weird things going on. The first of which is that if we have a space here and no second line of the address, we have a big gap.
So, we want to remove that. To do that, let's go to Preview, and then we're going to go to the top lines again, and we're going to go to Content Placement Options. In this case, InDesign gives us the opportunity to remove blank lines for empty fields such as a second address line.
So, we'll click OK. Let's again preview this, and if we go to the right here, we'll see that they mostly fit. However, in this case, Phase 10 Construction doesn't all fit on one line.
This is a really nice way that we can actually preview all of these things before exporting them. So, let's utilize our selection tool, and holding ALT, we'll simply drag it out so we have a little more space, and drag it down so that it fits right along that guideline. Now, we'll go back through and preview them, and all of these look good now.
So, let's click outside here, and we can uncheck Preview, and if we hit CTRL S on the keyboard to save our work, in the next video, we'll actually export all of our postcards. See you there!