Figuring out data merge years ago really has been a life saver for me at the office! I seriously wish they had taught me about this in college!
Part of the work I do includes creating multiple 'prize messages' for printed tickets given away as part of a game promotion in a grocery store. Sometimes there's over 300 different messages.
I take all the information provided in excel... make it a CSV file, and then merge it into my template in Indesign. Easy Peasy! The messages typically look something like this after I do the first merge.
Save $1.00 Off!
Nature Valley Protein
Cereal
Cranberry Almond or Oat’s N’ Honey,
310 - 465 g Carton
Next, I go through the messages, and add line breaks as necessary to ensure brand names and such are not broken awkwardly across multiple lines. Kinda tedious, but it has to be done manually.
Save $1.00 Off!
Nature Valley
Protein Cereal
Cranberry Almond or Oat’s N’ Honey,
310 - 465 g Carton
Inevitably, the client will change products and descriptions, so we just keep updating the CSV file (which is still linked to my InDesign file) and then I choose the "Update Content in Data Fields" Option. The new changes show up, but I lose all of the manual line breaks I have already made.
Is there any way to manually choose which lines from my CSV file that I want to update --- so I an avoid having to re-do all those line breaks each time? If you can think of an alternative solution to my work flow, I'd be happy to hear it!
Thanks in advance everyone!
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