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• • June 26, 2010 at 8:34 pm #56181
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I use InDesign CS4 at work and sadly, ran into an issue with Data Merge not working if it came across 2 or more cells which were blank. It DOES NOT suppress the blanks like it does in CS3! I'm hoping this “bug” is fixed in CS5. Can anyone verify for me? We may be upgrading soon to CS5 and I want to make sure this will not be a problem for us going forward.

  • June 27, 2010 at 11:57 pm #56193
    Roland

    Member

    I've had no problems with empty cells in either CS4 or CS5, and I've done a dozen or so data merges. You do have to check the box to “Remove Blank Lines for Empty Fields” (someone at Adobe still loves capitalizing every word… that's sooo 90's) but other than that it ought to work just fine.

  • June 28, 2010 at 2:57 am #56195
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Yes, I have that option enabled.

    My setup is a single page letter with a text frame in a separate layer with a text box for the address area. This is placed in a specific position for the address area to line up with the envelope window when the paper is folded. I have my merge fields in this text box. Very basic setup.

    But when I perform the merge, It's only when it comes across 2 or more blank fields that it's not suppressing them all. I still end up with a single empty paragraph in the final merge result.

    So you're telling me they still haven't fixed this in CS5? That's rather disappointing. :( Why would they mess with something that worked fine in previous versions?

    I guess I will have to learn scripting to remove it after the fact.

    Thanks anyway for your reply. It's good to know I'm not going crazy.

  • June 28, 2010 at 6:44 am #56199
    Roland

    Member

    If I enter a Paragraph Return (ENTER) after every data merge field the empty lines get removed no matter how many there are.
    If I enter a Forced Line Break (SHIFT-ENTER) after every data merge field the empty lines don't get removed as the line break doesn't seem to get taken into account for the data merge.

    You could always press Ctrl + Alt + i (Cmd + Opt + i on Mac) to see what's keeping the empty lines visible. If it's not related to the breaks prior to merging you could select the offending invisible characters and use Find/Change to get rid of them in the merged document.

    — edited for clarity.

  • June 28, 2010 at 5:16 pm #56201
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks Roland. I will have to check that next time I'm at work. I was pretty sure I only pressed a normal return, but perhaps not. It would really put my mind at ease if it was just “user error” — I hope it was just me being an ID10T. :)

  • July 27, 2010 at 11:14 am #56464
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    My setup does not have soft returns in the layout. The merge fields are in a separate layer called “address”.

    I was wondering if someone could write a Javascript or VBScript script for me to remove any double line feeds (2 paragraph marks? in all text in the “address” layer of a currently open document. I need it to work on a PC so it has to be in one of these formats.

    Would that be possible? I don't know scripting enough to do it myself.

    p.s. – It needs to work in CS4. (thanks in advance)

  • July 27, 2010 at 11:31 am #56465
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I just noticed something. My template's merge fields are using normal returns on each line, but after doing a merge, for instance if there's blank cells in Address2 and Address3, that would be 2 blank cells. If I go into Normal view it shows 2 symbols (they look like colons) in the empty line, and they're after the paragraph mark, so it doesn't seem like I can select them. Would this have something to do with it?

    I would supply a picture but I don't think this forum allows me to use attachments.

  • July 27, 2010 at 5:04 pm #56472
    Somerset Walmsley

    Member

    You should be able to do a find/replace for the double returns, jsut select the story on the layer, limit the search by STory in the Search drop down and choose “Multiple Return to Single Return” from the Query drop down at the top. It finds more than 1 hard and soft returns in a row and replaces with a return.

    Does your invisible characters look like any of these https://creativepro.com/dow…..lchars.pdf ? Do they show up in Story Editor? If you can select them, then you can copy and paste into a find/replace and replace them with nothing, which should help you out. Some times other programs add extra characters that only show up when you move the data into other programs such as InDesign. I often process my data in ID to remove extra spaces, tabs, misc characters and such before doing the Data Merge.

  • July 27, 2010 at 7:59 pm #56474
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Thanks Vasha, I'll try that out tomorrow. Sounds promising. :)

    And yes, it looks like a “text anchor” but AFTER the paragraph mark. very strange.

    If the find/change idea works that will be great! Thanks again.

  • July 27, 2010 at 8:07 pm #56475
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    And just to prove I'm not the only one with this problem, see this thread on adobe's forums.

  • July 28, 2010 at 5:06 am #56483
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I tried the GREP find/change thing, but it only did it on the current page. Is there any way to do it on all pages?

  • July 28, 2010 at 5:19 am #56484
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    That's weird. GREP find/replace has a few options for its Search Scope (All Documents, Document, Story, or Selection), and page is not among these :-D

    Are you sure you did not select anything? (Find/Change decides at a whim you “wanted” to search in a selection only, or the entire document — it seems to always guess the reverse of what I actually intended.)

    Just try again, and check if the Search Where dropdown is set to “Document”.

  • July 28, 2010 at 5:22 am #56486
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I had it set to Story. The thing is though, it seems the address area is a separate “story” on each page. I think that's why it's not going beying the current page. I had the address text frame (which is in my layer named “address”) selected when I ran it.

    So I guess I'm back to needing a script? Here's what I want but I don't know how to write it in javascript:

    With active document
    for each page in document
    with all stories in layer named “address”
    perform GREP find/change for “multiple return to single return”
    end with
    next
    end with

  • July 28, 2010 at 6:17 am #56489
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Actually, a coworker came up with the solution and I wanted to post it here in case anyone else reading this has the same problem.

    What I had to do was HIDE the layers I didn't want affected first, then run the GREP find/change on the DOCUMENT. It worked! :) It only ran it on the visible layers.

    Thanks so much for everyone's help! I can finally put this issue to rest. (but seriously Adobe, why is this bug still in the software???)

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