Data Merge for a 1-page grocery ad
KellyR (520 points) | Tue, 2009-05-12 20:20Hello all...
I'm wondering if any of you have any experience with something like this. We have a huge double-truck grocery ad we spend hours on each week, and I'm trying to find a way to automate a lot of it.
The client submits their content (excluding photos) in an xcel document, so there's really no reason, i think, that we can't somehow try to utilize Data Merge to fill in all the text on the ad.
The problem I'm seeing with Data Merge is that it wants to create multiple pages for each set of data. OR, it'll lay out the data on a single page in a very structured grid, however, our grocery ad doesn't conform to a specific grid-like layout... it has several different grids.
Well, here's a screen shot to show what I'm explaining...
So... I'm just wondering if I'm approaching this in the wrong way thinking Data Merge could help? Can I adjust Data Merge to lay the information out in my own grid setup?
We already use paragraph styles to handle the text... but we still have to touch on each line of text to change it to a specific paragraph style. If I were to use Data Merge, I could have the text flow into the areas with the specific paragraph styles already applied.
And, of course, I could set up Data Merge to pull in the images we need (although we'll have to still spend some time adjusting them to fit the way the client prefers... they're pretty finicky about how the images lay out in the spaces, and their preference seems to change every week).
So, I'm just curious if any of you have had to work on a recurring large-scale ad like this and found a way to automate the process.
Data Merge is like a tempting carrot dangling in front of me... but I'm just not sure it'll work due to the restrictions I'm seeing as far as how it handles laying out multiple pieces of data on a single page.
PS - this is in CS2 (don't laugh! I'm sure corporate will upgrade us to CS3 by the time CS9 is out...)
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My first reaction is that if you wanted to incorporate Data Merge into your workflow for this project, you'd have to do quite a bit of standardization (from one ad to the next) in your layout.
I use Data Merge for things like business cards, name badges for conferences... anything that has the same layout and just the data (text) changes.
Check out this very helpful tutorial video. I send this link to 2 or 3 people a week:
http://indesignsecrets.com/the-indesigner-episode-43-data-merge.php
Terrell Thornhill
e-zign Design Group
Thanks Terry - that was the "indesigner" video that got me thinking about this in the first place, actually. ;)
not that i could tell you how to do this one in particular, but instead of data merge, my mind drifts to XML. i don't know how easy it would be to go from excel table to XML data (i think excel will export xml, but whether your structure will translate, etc, i don't know). i just know that i created some complex tables for a conference session book once with an XML import that cut my production time by 80-90%. much of which was eaten up by the up-front coding, but it moved my work time to the front of the project and allowed us to have better QA at the end. and your project would be recurring, so structure set up the first time would be made up significantly in the long run.
does the client actually build the data for you in excel? if now, how does it get into excel? if so, would you be able to create a new excel template for them that might make it easier to get XML?
truthfully, XML is an amazing thing for structured documents once you figure it out. saves tons of time.
I know absolutely nothing about XML.
The client enters everything onto an xcel spreadsheet and sends that over to us. I see that xcel allows the option to save as an xml document, though, so we could certainly just take the client's document and save it the way we need it.
Now it's a matter of how to set up a "template" to import the xml data every week, it appears.
I'll dig through my InDesign help files and poke around online, but if anyone can elaborate or point me over to some particularly helpful tutorials on this, it would be much appreciated.
Also, if anyone else has another approach I could try, I'd love to hear it.
In any case, I'm perfectly fine with burning several hours on setting up a template for this that will support automation if it means it'll cut down our production time on this from the 4-6 hours we spend on this a week down to maybe 2 or less.
Thank you for the responses so far!
XML puts "tags" around the text to define formatting (similar to HTML). indesign can read those tags and convert them to paragraph/character styles.
i'll give you an abbreviated walkthrough of what i did, even though it doesn't directly apply since i was getting the info from a database and could have them make a custom report for me. but it'll give you an idea of how XML can be used.
i built my indesign template. essentially, a huge, 3-column table that had:
date/time | description | room
as structure.
inside each cell, there were multiple lines of text with multiple paragraph/char styles. i had the guy making the DB report include XML tags that had the same names as my INDD styles.
i also had him place "++" at the end of each cell and "==" at the end of each row.
before i imported the XML file, i mapped all of the XML styles to the corresponding INDD style (only have to do that in your template file once). then i imported the XML and it came in with all styles applied (this took some trial and error to get the DB report structured properly).
once i had all the text in, i selected all of the text, then convert text to table with "++" as the marker for cell and "==" as the marker for row. since it was 100 pages long, it took a couple of minutes, but the table built itself. i selected it all, turned off the lines and modified the cell padding and voila, 97% of my formatting was done in less than 5 minutes. it would be even quicker in CS3 or CS4, with table styles.
the beauty in this for me (and my client) was that i did just that much, then gave them a printout to proof. they marked up the proof, then *updated the database* and gave me a new XML file that i then imported and did the process again (about 5-10min). then gave them a 2nd proof and they updated the DB again.
this meant that all edits were made to their raw data (which they used for other things) instead of an INDD file that they couldn't open. only very minimal edits at the last second were made in INDD and we waited until the last day or two before going to the printer to put in the data and do final reviews. win/win!
anyway, i don't know whether this would be feasible for you coming out of excel. i don't know enough about how excel does XML exports. i know it doesn't have styles. i know word does, but i don't know if they translate well (i know word does horrible HTML, so it probably does bad XML, too). but maybe it'll give you some ideas or help with a project in the future.
after doing this project (which in the past was a huge nightmare), i'm a huge proponent of using XML for processing data into INDD now.
I haven't had a chance to try this out yet, but I did want to make sure I came back with a big "THANK YOU" for the information you have provided. I hope when I get a chance to breathe over here, I can sit down and start fiddling around with this to see where it can take us.
Thanks again for your suggestions!
not a problem at all. as i said, it may not work out for you in this instance, but it's good knowledge to have in the back of your head for those moments it may be a life saver (or even a job saver, in this economy).
I have a experience in programming automated workflows and you're absolutely right, this is ripe for automation.
XML is a good choice, as is data merge. Often AppleScript/JavaScript can be 'easier' than either.
I can lend a hand when you cross that bridge.
Without my sense of direction, I don't know where I'd be.