InDesign Data Merge
Data Merge is a tool in Adobe InDesign that allows you to automate and batch-create variations in a design layout, such as names and contact info on a business card.
Steps
Once you have finalized your base design with placeholder text create a copy of your file.
Now you will need to create a spreadsheet with all of the variable information. To do this you will need to type in the first row of the spreadsheet a category name for the entries of variable information ie: “Name” “Title” “Email”...etc. Do this until each category has its column.
Now in each column fill in the variable information for that category, making sure that each grouping of information is all in the same row ie “Steven Singer, Photographer, singer@gmail.com”
**one thing to note is that if you would like to include photos the category title will have to start with “@” symbol ie “@ProfilePhotos” and then the individual photos in the column will need to be the link to where the photo lives on your computer ie: “MacintoshHD:Users:Cami:Desktop:Fellows-Brochure-Template-2Folder:Links:Ahmadi-Azin-1000x1000.jpeg”
Find the example spreadsheet here
Once you are done filling out the spreadsheet, download it as a CSV file.
Now open up the indesign document and open the data merg window by going to Window > Utilities > Data Merg. Open the data merg menu by clicking the burger in the top right of the window and click select data source and select the cvs file.
** make sure to select “Open import options” and make sure “Preserve spaces” is checked.
You should see the names of your entries in the data merg window. Highlight a piece of text in the document that corresponds to an entry and click on that entry in the data merg window, (you can also drag and drop the entries on the page as well) it should change to the name of the entry, do this for all entries and them go back and assign them the correct paragraph styles if necessary.
** In the data merg panel you can click preview to view your actual content in the design
Open the create merged document window from the data merg panel to view settings
If you want to create multiple records on one page, select multiple records in the records per document dropdown.
**The dropdown may not be clickable If you have other pages in your document that won’t be apart of the data merg ie: a cover page, delete them for now you can bring them back in later. This is why we made a copy.
You can style the records in the multiple record layout tab of the create merged document window by setting the margins and space between rows and columns.
If you have included images into the entries you can style them in the options tab in the create merged document window
Once you click “Okay” on the create merged document window a new indesign file will be created with all of your entires filling in their set spaces.
**You should get a pop-up that says there's no overset text
Now if you had anyother pages like a cover page you can add pages and bring them back into the document, you may have to override any parent page attributes on these pages if you used them in the data merged pages.
Once you have everything working the way you want you can export the file to a pdf or save it as you would a normal indesign file.