PIVOT! I wear that one out whenever I help someone move.

Quote from: Joe on February 05, 2024, 11:27:58 AMJust google searches and finally ran across the ="" formula. Didn't save the website and now can't find it again.

I did some VDP in my prepress life. Not a lot but some.

Good news Joe, the =" worked. Bad news.... i screwed something else up. Don't you love it when you are flying by the seat of your pants and supposed to know everything about everything but you are really many mistakes away from being good? I will have to deal with it tomorrow, they are waiting for me to fix it.

Isn't that the way it usually goes? Pull a miracle out to be screwed over by something else. Been there...done that!

Don't they have tech support for a reason? I once had a job... The Polar Express. It's a special event every Christmas season by the CSRM (California State Railroad Museum). They run an old train in honor of the movie (and play the movie on screens inside) for November and December 4x a day, 4 days a week. It's the hottest ticket in town; you have to be a member of the museum society for at least a year to get an advanced purchase. It usually sells out for the season in the first 5 minutes. Once upon a time, it was my job to make the tickets. The tickets CANNOT AND MUST NOT EVER be resold and if they find out you bought them from someone else, the tickets are immediately voided and unusable. There were 6 cars (IIRC). Each car's ticket had a different image. There were 4 runs per day. Each run had a different color. Each car had an assigned seat with a unique code/number. Each car had a different number of seats. Each ticket was imprinted with a different date and time. Then, we had a hologram sticker printed that had to be manually applied to each ticket to prevent counterfeiting. Essentially, IIRC, there were something like 56,000+ tickets to be printed, and each ticket was unique.

I did this in FusionPro, and before I even started the job, I had to program an Excel file - they didn't supply one. I usually got the job at the start of September, and the tickets went on sale the first of October, so it had to be deliverable after that. It usually took a day to create the Excel file, and then 2 days to program the code in FusionPro for the color background swap, the car image swap, the dates, times, car numbers and unique barcode. It ran digital on 120# stock 4/4 and had to back up perfectly with no skew. After approved, it took about 2 days to run, and about 2-3 days in bindery because they always miscut and we had to rerun random tickets.

Originally it was like 768 separate files (6 cars x 4 times a day x 4 times a week x 8 weeks) because I wasn't smart enough to figure out all the proper programming. Then I enlisted the FusionPro guys to help, and we got it down to a single file, but had to export it in 768 files, but luckily, that's one export. I don't even remember if these are the correct numbers, but I'm using it as an example of how complex the job was. Until you deal with something like this, I am the VDP God.

Quote from: Joe on February 06, 2024, 06:44:41 PMIsn't that the way it usually goes? Pull a miracle out to be screwed over by something else. Been there...done that!

The damned wall of frustration.

Think I fixed it this morning. (pretty sure). They will let me know soon. They didn't complain about the double quotes so at least we have that going for us!

Congratulations Joe! The data house approved the text file with the double quotes!!

Another fine job by our prepress Guardian Angel!

Holy cow! why could't the data house do it?
That would make me crazy

Quote from: pspdfppdfxhd on February 07, 2024, 01:05:04 PMCongratulations Joe! The data house approved the text file with the double quotes!!

Another fine job by our prepress Guardian Angel!

How long before the check arrives?

Quote from: Tracy on February 07, 2024, 01:40:10 PMHoly cow! why could't the data house do it?
That would make me crazy

No, they really couldn't, it was 44 digit scanline with leading zeroes and stuff, one of the numbers which was 10 digits started counting up where it should've been constant throughout. Like 1000000001 on the next record became 1000000002. My mistake for using the auto fill in excel. Sometimes it does that and i don't know why.

Quote from: Joe on February 07, 2024, 02:44:36 PM

Quote from: pspdfppdfxhd on February 07, 2024, 01:05:04 PMCongratulations Joe! The data house approved the text file with the double quotes!!

Another fine job by our prepress Guardian Angel!

How long before the check arrives?

Well i really should you know. Let me know if you become really down and out and i will see what i can do. But you can probably imagine how little i make in this racket. And don't tell me you're down and out now, i know you had money to buy a new Mac! 

And besides, Guardian Angels aren't supposed to ask for payment. It's in their code of conduct book. I saw it once.

Pound of flesh?
Eye for an eye?

Quote from: pspdfppdfxhd on February 07, 2024, 03:36:13 PMAnd besides, Guardian Angels aren't supposed to ask for payment. It's in their code of conduct book. I saw it once.

Was kidding.

Spoiler

Not needed with the billions of dollars I earned in prepress over the years.

[close]

You accept PayPal?

Quote from: pspdfppdfxhd on February 07, 2024, 05:33:13 PMYou accept PayPal?

Nope.