Data Merge not populating correctly when placeholder curse overflow
When using Data-Merge with an .txt/.csv and using export as pdf, indesign (still) merge the fields wrong (only use the first data-entry), if the placeholder and not the data curse an frame-overflow.
Detailed description:
You have a textframe with enough space to place the string "888", but not enough space to place "8888".
You have a .csv table with a colum named "number" and values from "1" to "999".
You select the file with data-merge and get a placeholder "<<number>>" and replace the "888" with it. Now you got a frame overflow.
You select preview, and all values (1 - 999) shows up fine without any overflow.
You try to export as pdf.
You aspect: a pdf-file containing 999 pages with numbers from 1 to 999.
You get: a pdf-file containing 999 pages all with the value 1. :-(
Work arounds:
1.) making the text-frame bigger, until the placeholder fits.
2.) let data-merge generate a merged indd-file.
Both work-arounds are no solutions! I often work with layouts where u can't choose option 1, small tickets for example. Solution 2 is a real nightmare if u work with graphics and many data-entrys.
Yve
shared this idea
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Peter Ruf
commented
It*s a bug - now we have 18.2.1. Please fix it!
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Anonymous
commented
I have this problem as well, but only when I add photos with the merge. Either way, I'm surprised to see that it's a bug as I thought it was a beginner mistake from my side - even more surprised that this has not been fixed yet, as I don't really see how I can use the function in the state that it is in. I guess it's option 2 for me, but i was trying to avoid the huge files.
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Anonymous commented
So glad something exists that documents this problem. Please fix it. This was **** to figure out, and the work arounds are really not great. Particularly annoying when using single number values that need to be larger than other text.
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Jason
commented
I am surprised that I find that this bug has been reported already and not fixed, and it is not a new bug.
The bug is still happening in 16.1. I don't see how Adobe can let this go on - there is no work around whatsoever.
Going on 17 months since the bug was introduced and reported?
I also wanted to add that whatever shows in the preview must make it to the exported PDF - at the very least make the preview show the same wrong result as appears in the exported PDF.
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Rick Plummer
commented
Still there in ID 2021. Huge problem for us, as we do hundreds of these merges a year.
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Kathleen Brunetto commented
Wow, thanks for explaining this Yve, I couldn't figure out why my fields weren't merging. I am using a ton of small numbers but the column names are 2 large words so expanding the text box isn't an option.
I ended up exporting to indesign and it generated everything correctly as you suggested for #2.
I am running latest version of maxOS and tried this both in 2020 and 2021 indesign.Looking forward to a solution so that we can trust PDF export.
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Yve Ice
commented
PUSH!
The Problem still exists! INDD 15.0.3 x64 on Windows 10 (1909).
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Andreas commented
I was just about to report this bug, when I saw it was already here. Thank you, Yve for adding it!
I would say it's a bug, since you should not have to rely on a PLACEHOLDER textframe being large enough to show a part of the field name, for the actual data merge to work. But that is the case. Data merge developers at Adobe, please fix this.