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• • July 27, 2015 at 1:07 pm #76921
    Riccardo Brasca

    Participant

    Hi there!

    I’m new to the forum and I hope I can find some suggestion about automated pagination.
    I’ve read a lot about it, never had the chance to test it, but now I got a real question.

    Here it is:
    I would like to match and link content already paginated in indesign to data from excel. And then, maybe, get back from there some (related) additional data to fit other frames (or cells) in indesign.

    Here’s the situation:
    I got a 600 pages catalogue that is updated manually every year in a very short period of time, 2 months, and for specific reasons I’m focusing exclusively on the last process: the insertion of prices.
    Codes and prices, depending on the article type, are inserted in tables (with other informations) or in single text frames (which could be better converted in tables).
    The client hands me an excel file with the full list of the articles, in one big table, containing codes and related prices, of course.

    Now, I’m wondering about a system to match and link the codes already paginated in indesign, whether they’re in table cells or inline frames (maybe via tag), to the codes in the excel file, and get back the related price to fit in the right position.
    Should I tag code and price contents? Is there any script that can do this kind of “reverse work”? What else?

    Extra request:
    There is also a barcode for each code, generated with cacidi plug-in. Is there a way to link the generation of the barcode to the previous data, put it in a specific frame, and have it updated on data changes?

    I know it’s a lot, thanks for the attention….

    Riccardo

  • July 27, 2015 at 2:11 pm #76923
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi,

    That’s a tough one. Is it possible to consider starting from scratch ? A plugin like EasyCatalog could help you building your 600pages catalog in a blink with dynamic links towards the source file.

    If you don’t want to go that way, you can think of using XML and doing a map tags to styles menu call. That would tag any possible content that match a specific style. Eventually you would get a XML structure. But it would imply some sort of connection between the output XML and the xsl file. I did some sort of XSL attempt (EXCEL XML to InDesign XML) but I couldn’t get to work.

    Scripting may be able to use that raw xml structure maybe to read the CSV file from Excel and do the “links” (well that wouldn’t be dynamic links)

    That’s teh best I can think of. But outside of any concerns, I would consider EasyCatalog and redo the whole stuff.

    Loic

  • July 27, 2015 at 3:17 pm #76925
    Riccardo Brasca

    Participant

    Hi Loic,
    thanks for your answer.
    Well, the big, big problem is that currently the client is unable to coordinate and conveying the updated data in digital format, because it’s a distributor of many different productors, and it defines the new articles to be distributed just the month before I will start to work on the catalogue. I think they don’t have time to ask for digital data and update their CMS or anything else.

    They scratch, cut and paste over the older printed version. It’s a very strict deadline, and the only digital data that comes in handy is the pricelist with the full codelist, in the final phase.
    This is the situation, unless they’ll decide to radically change their organization.

    Going back to your proposal, does Easy Catalog let only link from datasource to indesign? Or make it even possible in the “reverse” way I need, creating new, dynamic connections?

    Riccardo

  • July 27, 2015 at 3:34 pm #76926
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I would agree with Loic.

    InDesign by itself does not have any good way to linking with individual Excel cells like you’re describing.

    But note that even if you can script a solution or find a plug-in or XML or whatever, it will be essential that the data be VERY precisely maintained. Database publishing requires precision and reliable consistency. If all you can get is a little data here and a little data there, and it’s all very fluid and inconsistent from year to year… there’s just no way to automate that.

  • July 27, 2015 at 4:00 pm #76928
    Riccardo Brasca

    Participant

    ok, I got it… I tried it…
    So the only real solution is to build everything over from the most recent datasource, and makes the client working on it for every future publication. But then, what about cacidi? In a workflow like that, is there a way to automate the generation of barcodes from data and keep them linked together into the indesign layout?
    Thanks

  • July 27, 2015 at 11:51 pm #76932
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi,

    I can’t talk of Cacidi as I don’t know the product well but one will probably give you those. For what I am aware of, is that EasyCatalog would definitively keep dynamic data links to the source and could be able to generate barcodes on the fly based on the data. So if the data ever changes, so the barcode will.

    HTH,

    Loic

  • July 28, 2015 at 12:03 am #76933
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    I missed your inbetween post, so here are my answers :

    “This is the situation, unless they’ll decide to radically change their organization.”
    I hope for you they will ;)

    Going back to your proposal, does Easy Catalog let only link from datasource to indesign? Or make it even possible in the “reverse” way I need, creating new, dynamic connections?

    No, I guess that there couldn’t be any solution reliable enough to warranty a 100% catch. I understand you want to spare you efforts not rebuilding the catalog but I am afraid there is no magic here. Once that said, I need to check. EasyCatalog has a scripting module so I will see if you could dynamically apply EC tags based on the styling but to insist, I can’t see how it would absolutely error free. Imagine you could have two items with a 100€ price. Are those 100€ the price of item A or item B ?

  • July 28, 2015 at 1:50 am #76935
    Riccardo Brasca

    Participant

    I understand. It’s all clear.
    I’m not considering (yet) to rebuild the catalogue because at the moment there aren’t the conditions to think about it.
    I just wanted to check the possibility of some in between solution, in order to test some automated functionality on a small part of the whole data, without upset the entire work (with raising costs, and issues).

    In my ignorance i thought so:
    I have a table in indesign with code column filled with data and price column empty, both of them with respective tagged styles. I make the system match data on xls file for column styled code, and, since into indesign layout every row in a table correspond to the row in excel, it can (maybe) get the precise price associated to a specific (matched) code, and put it in the associated cell. And eventually creating and maintaining a dynamic link.

    …..have I dreamed it all?

    After all, it wouldn’t be a bad features for indesign to export table data creating an external, linked file. Like an embedded image that become unembedded.

  • July 28, 2015 at 5:41 am #76942
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    One that you you could think of is to convert your table into text while using a tab delimitation for columns. Then copy paste that in a text file you would rename to CSV. That CSV you would open it later in Excel. However that won’t allow update later within InDesign.

  • July 28, 2015 at 2:53 pm #76982
    Riccardo Brasca

    Participant

    mmmm, ok, you are very clear.
    I would like to ask three more questions:
    Have you checked if there is a remote possibility to gain some results with scripting in Easy Catalog?
    Why datamerge or csv import doesn’t allow data dynamic linking? What’s the difference with xml/Easy Catalog import (briefly)?
    The only way to easily make selective import of data from an xls table (for example) is by Easy Catalog-like plug-in?
    Thanks….

  • July 30, 2015 at 2:37 am #77029
    Anonymous

    Inactive

    Hi Riccardo,

    To answer your questions :

    Have you checked if there is a remote possibility to gain some results with scripting in Easy Catalog?
    EasyCatalog is generally powerful enough to avoid the need of scripting. But in some cases, it can help. You can use scripts on two levels with EasyCatalog. First one is at field level meaning that you can execute a jsx script to return a specific field value. This is something I introduced here :

    Real time Currency Conversion within Adobe InDesign

    You can on a second level buy and use the scripting module that will allow anyone to drive the easycatalog plugin in a context of a script ( paginate records for example). I did some developments in this area for a client of mine that wanted to output properly named PDF based on EasyCatalog Datasheets generation.
    So the latter is only needed if you want to drive EasyCatalog by scripting. Otherwise you can use scripts into a field. But once again, there are so many features that scripting is barely needed.

    Why datamerge or csv import doesn’t allow data dynamic linking?
    Hé hé ask Adobe Folks ;)

    What’s the difference with xml/Easy Catalog import (briefly)?
    You can certainly do advanced stuff with XML. I built Catalogs based on XML imports. I just find it’s quickly limitating. Layouts tends to be UBER complicated with unlimited combinations of anchored objects. Pretty hard to maintain and updates are all but safe in my humble opinion. Also you will have a greater learning curve befor you can get something out of it and eventually need to learn some XSLT.
    If you are a learner and some time free ahead you can explore XML import for your project but I bet somehow you will do teh same statements I did ;)

    The only way to easily make selective import of data from an xls table (for example) is by Easy Catalog-like plug-in?
    To be fully honest, EasyCatalog is one of a few that can indeed link a xls file to an indesign document. Not the only one but as it’s the only one I master, I will stick to it. So yes, it’s a great tool to work with XLS files. You can work with subsets of data without touching the source file by filtering/grouping…

    If you do catalogs a lot, that’s definitively a tool to consider.
    HTH

    Loic

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