2 page data merge

[wonderings]

I have a job I need to do a merge on. It is super simple, it is a 2 page file. Front page has an access code, back page is static. I need to export this as single file PDF's so the name's of each PDF can be variable merged as well. The PDF made has the first page with the variable and makes a second individual page of the static back. Is there anyway to have it make a 2 page PDF merged? Latest version of Indesign being used. 

[Tracy]

Yes InDesign will do any amount of pages, It knows how many pages you have and what pages have data.
and it will run that sequence until the data runs out.
you can tell Indesign to make separate pdfs I do believe, but I use Acrobats Split function, you can get creative on how acrobat names the splits
I think that is your question

[DCurry]

If you need to rename the individual PDFs that Tracy is talking about, I have some tricks that make it a breeze. I do this a few times a year for a job that contains thousands of records.

I don't use Data Merge (I use SmartStream Designer, an ID plugin) but the concept is the same - create the merged PDF (all records in 1 big PDF), open that PDF in Acrobat and use the Split function to split it into individual 2-page PDFs. Then my renaming process is used. If you want more info on that just ask - I don't want to type it all out if that's not what you're looking for.

[Tracy]

I'd be interested in your renaming it might be the same as mine, but if it's better that would be awesome!

[DCurry]

I have an AppleScript I found somewhere. From my notes:

The CSV should have no headers and 2 columns - Original Name and Desired Name (you can capture the Original Names by copying the Finder listing and pasting into Excel or TextWrangler, then remove ".pdf" in the data before continuing.

Launch the AppleScript and you will be prompted to point to the CSV and to the folder containing the PDFs to be renamed.

[DCurry]

For the job I do this on, there are about 3-400 sales reps, each with multiple PDFs and the customer wants me to organize it so that each rep has a subfolder that contains all their PDFs. I use the above method to rename the files, prepending each one with the sales rep name, then run a terminal command that creates the subfolders and moves each PDF into the folder that matches the prepended name. Then I use a handy little app called NameChanger to strip off the prepended sales rep name from each PDF. It's all pretty cool and way easier than trying to do it manually. Usually I'm dealing with 10-12,000 files for this project.

[Tracy]

wow that is something! your so geeky

[DCurry]

Nah, I would be geeky if I created all those tricks but I've instead relied on the geekiness of others and exploited it for my own laziness.