Excel stuff

[DigiCorn]

FusionPro is good if you don't have a large number of records... say less than 10,000. XMPie is better for large quantities. FusionPro has some limitations, like having to set up in PDF only (you can create "placeholders," in ID or Illy, but it really doesn't work very well), and sometimes the programming can be overly complex.

Using ID's mail merge for VDP works for simple stuff, but at my last place we would only output 500 records at a time. It *can* do more, BUT we found that there were fewer issues by simply breaking it up into chunks, plus the Fiery can process the merged file faster. We would typically print masters offset, and then only impose the VDP in mail merge in ID and imprint the masters, but I have also done it 4-color on the digital press by creating a master within Command Workstation and then an imprint file that references the master.

In all instances, having a good excel data file is crucial to start with.

[Tracy]

I had dabbled with Fusion pro a bit, it was awhile back and it seemed clunky.

I may have to look into XMPie, but for what we do Indesign is working fine
I can do large (for us) jobs but it seems things might be getting more difficult
as files get larger, I got a really fast computer last time, but I'm thinking I may 
need to go bigger!! 

I think the main problem might be the customers   as when I have clean data
it's a smooth as Buttah this last one I ended up with merged word docs that needed
a lot of cleaning up, frustrated the heck out of me, and then it wouldn't go in my work flow.
had to multi page import for a cut and stack in indy.

one thing I may look into is quite imposing for jobs like this.

[DCurry]

I don't miss using FusionPro at all, just saying it's a lot of biliary for the price compared to alternatives. It used to be even cheaper but I think they moved to a subscription model nowadays. 

You're right about the data, though - bad data is bad data. You just might have more options with rules and such to deal with bad data than you currently have. 

[Tracy]

yeah it helps to talk to people, because I work alone, I don't know what the rules are! 

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Speaking of excel problems... has anyone ever run into having to create a csv text file with all cells having double qotes around the data? Even the blank cells will have them as well.

Example: "John Smith","123 Main Street"," ", The last one there was from a blank cell. I know, this is a prepress forum, but some of the stuff i have to deal with nowadays is ridiculous. I googled it to death but couldn't figure it out. Figure the best program may not even be excel to deal with this, maybe a text editor? I found one that would put quotes but only if there was content, but not with the blank cells.

[DCurry]

So you need to put the quotes in? Try BBEdit. You can search for comma and replace with quote-comma-quote and it should get most of them. Won't get the first and last of each line so you can search for comma-\r and add them that way.

Feel free to give me the list and I can do it if you hit trouble.

There may be instances where you cause damage, like if there is a comma in the data. There are probably ways to handle that too.

[DCurry]

To prevent changing the good commas you could save as tab-delimited and in BBEdit search for \t and replace with quote-comma-quote

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Thanks David, that was sort of the direction i was going to today. Downloaded BB edit, text wrangler and Libre office and tried and tried to figure something out. Libre office will export with quotes but only where data is present, not blank cells. Soooo... i put "oh crap" in all the blank cells in excel, opened it up in libre office, find and replace that with double quotes then said fkit. Need to get some beer, it's Sunday.

[pspdfppdfxhd]

I appreciate the offer for help but i have had it with this for today. There is a couple of people i can reach out to tomorrow for assistance, hope they aren't too busy, this job is already a week late!

[DCurry]

Who or what is telling you that you need every cell wrapped in quotes?

I'm used to seeing it that way because at my old shop most of the data came out of Redpoint that way, but none of the VDP software I've ever used requires it. 

[DCurry]

BTW, TextWrangler used to be the free version of BBEdit. Now it's just BBEdit but if you want all the features you have to pay. The free version is plenty powerful for our needs. I'm not writing code. The GREP search and replace abilities are great. 

[Joe]

Thanks David, that was sort of the direction i was going to today. Downloaded BB edit, text wrangler and Libre office and tried and tried to figure something out. Libre office will export with quotes but only where data is present, not blank cells. Soooo... i put "oh crap" in all the blank cells in excel, opened it up in libre office, find and replace that with double quotes then said fkit. Need to get some beer, it's Sunday.

The source file probably has a space in the blank cells causing it to include the blank cells so they might have thought the needed the blank cells included and they weren't so they added a space. Or they are using some stupid way to create the csv file. Try do a search and replace for " " and replace with nothing. Also that is Dan....not David. 

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Not too sure what you mean, but it's for a scanline reading of a 44 digit code on a donation reply coupon and the data input from our file has to go in like a grid so even the empty cells have to fit in there. 

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Who or what is telling you that you need every cell wrapped in quotes?

I'm used to seeing it that way because at my old shop most of the data came out of Redpoint that way, but none of the VDP software I've ever used requires it.

The company that loads the data to lookup from their scanner reading of the 44 digit scanline i had to create from various columns in the file that is printed on the bottom of the reply coupon.

Like this, sorta: 000000000000000 000000000000 0000000000 0000

[pspdfppdfxhd]

Once again, we seem to be catering to other vendors that should be doing this from our finished data output file. What else is new.