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• • July 18, 2017 at 10:29 am #96188
    Andrew Morgan

    Participant

    I’m posting here to see if Im using the best InDesign workflow for a certain job I have to do every year. Every year I say I want to change the process, but never do so maybe this will be the year. Sorry if I’m not explaining it right or I need to post this in another forum on this site.

    This particular job consists of imprinting copy on many covers of books. There are 5 book sizes in all. Each imprint would be totally different from the other. I have a separate ID template for each size. All the books will have at most 4 short lines of copy.
    Compliments of
    Company
    Persons name
    Phone number

    Sometimes there is just one line (maybe company name only) and sometimes there are 2, 3, or 4 lines. Each category has it’s own assigned font and size depending on the book size.

    I receive my copy from one excel spread sheet. This spread sheet would have the copy for all 5 sizes of books. Currently, I copy the text from Excel and paste into the correct size book template. Then I have to put in some returns to make sure the correct text is on the correct line. Next I apply the correct paragraph styles and that is about it. Doesn’t sound too hard, but there are a lot of these…maybe a hundred or so.

    Every year as I’m copying and pasting I think there must be a better way..am I missing something? I use scripts (nothing I wrote) in other work flows, but not sure if I should even begin to investigate that for this work flow? I do have some what of a say on how I receive the spread sheet copy. Any helpful hints of wisdom would be greatly appreciated and thanks for your time.

  • July 18, 2017 at 1:09 pm #96190
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    I’m sure someone will have a better idea, but here is one way to deal with a job like this:

    1. Place the Excel file as a table.
    2. If the categories line up in columns correctly, apply your Paragraph Styles to each column.
    3. If you need the text to flow to the next page, you can use Keep Options on the first style, Start Paragraph -> Next Page
    4. Table -> Convert Table to Text (Paragraph/Paragraph) – now your text should have the Paragraph Styles applied and there will be a return if there is no information. You can do Find/Replace Multiple Returns if you want to clean those up.

  • July 18, 2017 at 4:52 pm #96191
    Andrew Morgan

    Participant

    Thanks for the reply Colleen. I’ve been reading about data merging from a very informative old post. https://creativepro.com/automating-data-handling.php
    Maybe I need to think about this as a variable data challenge since just four or less lines of copy would be changing each time. Much like a business card or the example in the link above..however at any given time the copy could be going on any one of five different size covers. At the very least, I would think that when I receive my copy in the spread sheet, possibly I would need one spread sheet for each size cover.

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