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• • September 29, 2014 at 7:04 pm #70813
    Judith Durkin

    Participant

    I am placing this into the general forum because it gets a lot more traffic and I really need to resolve this issue.
    Question Posed to Me:
    We give the merchants a PDF to fill out when they want new signage. It usually includes an item number, it’s name, and the price for that item— for about 20 different items. We lay out the form like a table with each item taking a row and the item number, name, and price taking a column. In the PDF form as we have it layed out, each cell of the table has to be it’s own field. It’s annoying for the merchants to load in their info because they have to copy and paste each cell into each field. It’s annoying for me because I have to copy and paste each field into the final table I make in the corresponding table in the signage’s InDesign.
    Is there a way to have one form field be a table with different rows and columns or are we doomed to a bajillion fields layed out so they mimic a table?

    My Reply:
    IF IT WERE ME, I would use Adobe Forms Central, and set up a form for them to fill out – easy peasy.
    Export the data from FormsCentral as an Excel file
    Open Excel and export it as a .csv file whose cells you can stipulate as place holders in an automated InDesign data-merge document.
    It’s a bit tricky to set up, but when it works it is instant. I do it all the time. It is how Kids’ Baseball cards are made, etc.

    What is the answer to this and the easiest process? HELP!

  • September 30, 2014 at 5:22 am #70816
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    So is the question whether to use InDesign or Forms Central to make the PDF form? Forms Central is certainly optimized for that kind of thing. But I’m not sure if that helps the merchants in filling out the form.

    But no, there’s no way to make a single form field mimic a table. Drat.

  • October 29, 2014 at 12:09 pm #71294
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    @judycanby:

    It sounds like your clients want to be able to “dump” the item information in from their own spreadsheet into your order form using one big copy-paste action instead of each cell individually. Is that right?

    Disclaimer: I am not a pro with this. However, if that is your clients’ goal, to just dump the info into the order form, you could just use an Excel spreadsheet instead of a PDF form. You send them the spreadsheet and when they add the 20 items to the signage, they can paste the item info at least by column all at once into the spreadsheet, then you data merge it into InDesign upon receipt.

    I have a situation that sounds similar to yours. I use InDesign to create real estate property brochures for my photography clients. So when a client orders a photo shoot with me, it would be great to have their customer information pre-filled (if they are an existing customer) and all they have to do is fill in the property info, at which point I could merge it to the brochure file. My plan is to build a basic MySQL database where clients can log in and place an order, with their info pre-filled from a Customers table, then the property info. When they submit the form, the database will email me an XML file that is ready to import to InDesign. Perhaps a bit complex for your purposes, but it sounds like it might save you some serious time on the back end.

    Edit: I forgot to mention, David made a great post about data merging that can be found here:

    https://creativepro.com/creating-a-contact-sheet-or-yearbook-page-in-indesign.php

    That’s how I imagine your 20-item layout appearing on your customers’ signage, so hopefully it provides some help.

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