Indesign data merge annoyance

[hotmetal]

I could use a little advice on a tab-deliniated data merge from Excel into an InDesign data merge template on the master page.

It's just a 1-page marketing sheet, but there's 30+ versions. I've done this before in InDesign and it just went through like greased lightning, after combing out a few bugs and empty fields in the Excel file.

Tonight, instead of flowing all the fields in a row onto a page and going to the next page, it's insisting on treating the header text box like a linked text box, and flows all the text from one header box to the one on the next page, which it keeps generating on the fly until there are dozens of pages, with all the text running through the header text boxes it generates instead of populating the pages.

Annoyed? I've been doing data merges since I was a unix jock in the mid-1980s. Yes, annoyed!

 

[Joe]

Not sure if this will help but I went through an Excel to ID hell about a year and half ago and I had this thread that pretty much goes over everything I learned on the subject.

https://www.b4print.com/index.php?topic=7462.0

[Diddler]

I have always found it better to export the Excel file as a .csv file.  I've had some weird shit happen that I can't explain happen with Excel files. Might be worth a try first.

[hotmetal]

I have always found it better to export the Excel file as a .csv file.  I've had some weird shit happen that I can't explain happen with Excel files. Might be worth a try first.

Ok, tried .csv. Tried older versions of Excel. Did some more tidying up of the Excel file. Then my wife, Marjorie, came home from work. She's the Queen of Excel. Actually, she's the office manager of the Anthropology Dept. at the University of MN. She thought the problem was invisible characters, tabs, returns. I'd thought of that, too. She said one of the bugs all the Excel power users hate the most is you can't make it show you the invisibles.

Then I started looking closer at my merged file, because every few pages, a couple pages worked fine, then the reflow began again. I'd been too pissed off earlier to look into it that closer, because the shit started hitting the fan on page 1.

I copied the text of an offending cell into a temp Indy doc and turned on the invisibles, and there... they were... tabs, returns, multiple tabs in a row — did you know that's a cool way to get a line in an indented paragraph to stay indented when you add some local formatting? Everybody does it! Cool! Local formatting. In an Excel file. I actually bet I know what was going on — these sales sheets probably were composed in Excel by the individual salesperson responsible for that series of books. Aha!

Now I can have some fun picking out images. They send me a big pile of images and let me pick out the ones I like. They're usually half RGB and half CMYK, of course. All jpegs. Of course.

Beer in the fridge. About 2 more hours to go. Just like old times...


        

[Diddler]

You my friend have just hit the fucking nail on the head!! 

I went into the files from last week that was giving me grief and BAM! multiple tabs everywhere. I'll have a look at a work around solution to this problem tomorrow for everyone. 

The only positive is it sounds like your at home drinking beer. 

[DCurry]

I would save the Excel file as .CSV, then open in TextWrangler. Do a find for "\t" and replace with nothing - this will remove all the tabs.

[peter]

I could use a little advice on a tab-deliniated data merge from Excel into an InDesign data merge template on the master page.

Maybe I'm lazy, but for this kind of things now I use mostly pagination.com
I just design any kind of product style and they create custom InDesign automation based on my excel files (which usually they tweak a little bit, and sent them back for updates). Their automation enable a lot of nice features like tables, table breaks, indesign book and Table of Content.

They also host nice excel to indesign templates, and data merge tutorials with working downloadable files.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

I would save the Excel file as .CSV, then open in TextWrangler. Do a find for "\t" and replace with nothing - this will remove all the tabs.

Small Wonder? Dude, you kill me.

[DCurry]

It's about time someone noticed! Now you've got the theme song stuck in your head.

[Ear]

I noticed the Vickie but I know you don't like attention so I decided it would be our little secret.

[Tracy]

is text wrangler free?

[Ear]

Yep.

[Joe]

is text wrangler free?

Yep.

And awesome!

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

It's about time someone noticed! Now you've got the theme song stuck in your head.

Hahaha, i've been humming it all morning.