- [Instructor] InDesign's Data Merge feature
also lets you incorporate images
but there are couple of little tricks that you need to know.
First, let's take a look at the source excel file
that I'm going to use.
You can see in the columns, firstname, lastname,
year, brand, model and so forth,
and then this last column,
is how I have to represent directory path
to the Data Merge feature
so that it can find the images that I want to use.
So, how do you find the directory path for an image?
Well, let me show you.
On the Mac, just select the file,
right click, and then choose Get Info,
and in the Get Info dialog, there it is.
There is the complete directory path.
Now, notice that it just goes up so far
as the containing folder, Links.
It doesn't include the file name.
So, that you'd have to type manually.
But this, at least, gets you off to a good start
so I can copy that and then I can use it back in Excel.
On Windows, it's very similar, slight difference.
Select the file name, hold down the Shift key
while you right click for file
and then a context menu appears
and from that, you choose Copy as Path.
On either platform, once you've copied the directory path,
switch back to Excel, click in the appropriate cell
and then paste that directory path.
Now, you can see that's a really long-winded path.
This is what's called an absolute path,
it starts at the very beginning of the hierarchy
and shows you the complete path.
This is doable, it's tedious,
but for a small project, you could use this,
but you can imagine what fun this would be
if you had 200 graphics that were intended
to be used as variable content.
Well, that's Windows proprietary personalization solutions
start to become much more appealing but here's a tip.
If possible, setup your links as a relative directory path.
Let me show you what I mean.
Here, my InDesign file is in the same folder
as a Links folder that contains all of the images
that I'm going to use in Data Merge.
I do have to get each path separately
but it's a much shorter path.
Let me show you how it looks in Excel.
Remember, here's my absolute path,
here are my relative paths,
and what this notation here really means is InDesign.
You know what folder you're in.
Look down one level and you'll find a links folder,
inside that, you'll find this file, scooter_1.psd.
It's a lot shorter, it's easier to police, to edit,
to make sure that there aren't any problems with it,
there's still some work involved, of course,
in selecting that file name
but you can see that it's a little easier
to deal within this absolute path
so I'm going to delete that absolute path and get rid of that.
Once you've harvested those directory paths
to identify the graphics in the Excel file,
you have to do something else,
you have to specially identify that column
in a way that has meaning for the Data Merge function.
The title needs to be the at sign and word, image,
just @image, no space in between,
ah, but watch what happens when I try to make that entry.
Excel squawks at me and the reason is
that the at sign serves a special function in Excel
and this is what this just doesn't seem right to me
but I need that at sign for my Data Merge function.
So, what I can do is what's called escaping,
in other words, it's a way to the say to Excel,
"No, no, don't invoke that special function,
"I just need a plain old at sign",
and to do that, I just type an apostrophe
in front of that at sign.
Now, InDesign can't digest this Excel file directly
in the Data Merge function,
I have to save it as a CSV file.
That stands for Comma Separated Values.
That's really easy, you just choose File, Save As,
and then choose Comma Separated Values for your file format.
Once I've saved the Excel file, the CSV,
it's ready to use in InDesign.
By the way, I made two versions for you,
one for Windows and a Mac version.
So, make sure you pick the right one
if you're working along in the exercise.
Let's take a look at the CSV files
I've provided for you in a text editor
so that you can see the difference in them.
Now, here's the Mac file,
let's take a look at the CSV files I've provided for you
here in the text editor so you can see the difference
between the Mac version and the Windows version.
Now here, you can see the columns
are broken apart by commas,
that's why it's called Comma Separated Values
and here's how the links are represented,
how the link directory path is represented.
On a Mac, it's /Links which means,
go down one level, look in the Links folder
slash go inside the Links folder and there's your file.
Windows uses back slashes and the Mac uses forward slashes.
That really the only difference.
So again, if you're working along,
make sure that you've picked the right one.
Now, notice something else about this,
at the end of the text, there are these two lines of commas
with nothing in between 'em
and what that represents is a bunch of empty records
and that means that I'm going to end with two blank pages
in my exported file using Data Merge.
It isn't a show stopper but you know what,
I'm in my text editor, I might as well clean things up here.
So, I'll just select those two empty lines
and one more backspace so that I'm back
at the end of my good line and then just save that file.
Now, this is ready to go.
Now, back in InDesign, I'll open up the Data Merge panel
by going to Window, Utilities, and Data Merge,
and then I'll select my data source by going to panel menu
and choosing Select Data Source.
There is my corrected Mac.csv file,
and notice how those placeholders are represented,
firstname, lastname, so forth
and there's my image placeholder.
See how it looks different from everything else.
So, I'm going to go ahead and put in my text placeholders,
so I need a space then <>
and then down here, there's already a space
that kind of hard to see but it's there,
the <> space <> space <> and period.
Don't forget those little spaces and periods,
they are really easy to forget.
Now, how do I get this image placeholder
into these empty image frame?
Really easy, I just grab it and drag and drop
on top of the frame and you can see the word <>
in little double brackets that tells you
that this is a placeholder frame
and also this big bold dash border around the frame
tells you what it is.
Now, what about fitting?
By default, the Data Merge feature uses
the Fit Content to Frame option
and if that's what you want, great, you're good to go,
but if you need another option,
you'll find that trying to change the local setting here,
trying to select the frame
and change the fitting setting has no effect.
In this sense, Data Merge overrides anything
you do locally to the frame.
So, if you want to control fitting,
you're going to have to do that
through the Data Merge panel menu
by choosing Content Placement Options.
So again, as I mentioned, the default
is Fit Images Proportionally which in this case
is actually what I want so I'm ready to go
but if you want something else,
you'll have to choose it here, not by clicking on the frame
and then right clicking and choosing there,
that won't count, this is what counts.
So, I'll click OK because I'm ready to go
and let's check everything
before we generate the merged document.
I'll check Preview and then as I page through,
you can see that everything seems
to be looking the way I want, this is great.
So, I want a single record on each page
so I'm going to choose that option
as I create my merged document.
So, in the Data Merge panel,
I'll just come to the panel menu,
choose Create Merged Document and it's Single Record,
you can see they're chosen that here and that's the default
and it's usually what I want anyway,
and I wanted to alert me if there's anything missing.
I want to tell if there are overset text instances,
I don't think there will be but when I click OK,
this little alert comes up and that can panic you
but this is saying, "No, it's good news,
"there wasn't any overset text",
'cause remember, I asked it to warn me and when click OK,
you'll notice, this is my original file,
and this is the file that was generated
as part of that merged process.
So, what this means is that using Excel,
I now have this well, semi-automated process
that generates all of these customized versions
of my little post card and now I can send it out.
I think this was really fun and I hope
that at some point, you find this technique useful for you,
for creating projects such as mailers
or invitations or holiday cards.