I have a question about data merge: I have successfully set up a data merge where each record in a CSV file creates a page in the InDesign document. Each record includes some text and some photos. It works so far, but I would like the ability for the contents of each record in the CSV file to affect the layout used for the elements on that page. When we've created these documents in the past (manually, without data merge), we've used a different layout based mostly on the number of photos we have for each page. Each page can have three, four, or five photographs and the layout is different accordingly.
Currently each page is being created with the five-photo layout, and we then have to manually adjust the pages that have fewer photos. Is there a way to automate the layout variations with data merge?
Is this something that could be handled during the data merge, say by influencing the application of master pages for each new page or something like that? Or is it something that could be done with scripting after the data merge is complete? Or is there an inexpensive add-on that would add this capability to the data-merge feature? Or is there some other feature of InDesign I haven't thought of that could be applied to this problem?
Thanks in advance!
–Doug
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