Tip | InDesign Tutorial | Data Merge Project

Okay, let’s start this first tutorial off right. A BIG project that to try and Google yourself to the end can take a few days. Trust me on this, it took us a few days of research and practice to get this right.

Program: Indesign and a spreadsheet program.
Task: to bring in a bunch of data and format it, then allow it to thread.

This was a real project at my job, recently. One of our clients (I didn’t ask permission if I could disclose the client, so I won’t) needed to put over 1000 people and their contact information into a directory. At first I thought I would have to type it all in. However my boss and I were both afraid that some information would accidently get changed from this process. So, we then thought we’d copy & paste them all in. I did say there was over 1000 names right? Most people had multiple contact points, multiple homes and dozens of numbers.

Understand, most of my history deals with much smaller designs. This was a new thing for me. I had only done something like this once before, at a past employer I did something like this with 500 names and put them into an InDesign project where each page had A persons name. Only after I spent a few days of doing that did I learn that InDesign has a Data Merge feature. However, this was designed more for that project than this. It puts the data onto a new page, with no threading. The hard part after I got the Merge thing down was to allow it to thread. Threading was going to be very necessary as you will see.

Okay, so let’s start. First you need the data. It just needs to be a spreadsheet. I put together a very cheesy one to illustrate this.

First, Prep the file. Ensure there are no paragraph breaks in the cells. The file I had, had hard breaks in some of the headings. This caused major problems, until I discovered this. That’s why I’m telling you. And then you will want it in order that you want. So, I’m going to alphabetize the last names. Also on that note, ensure the headings are headings. Now export out thru Excel or Numbers or whatever you are using, as a .CSV file.

Before I get to the fun part let’s do something that will allow us to thread our boxes down the road. We need to add a plug in into our InDesign program. I will give a quick warning, I experience problems with this plugin, so my advice is to load it when you need it and take it out when you don’t. Since it’s the only plugin I know of that does what we need, it’s the plugin we will use. Plus it is free.

So, go to and Download the Textstitch plugin. Put it in the Plugin Folder.

Now, the fun part. Setting up the InDesign File. Now, to be safe I am going to set up Character Styles, this is in case things change down the road, I will be able to instantly change everything.

The document size I’m going for is a 3.5″ x 5.5″ document. And you only need one page right now.

This shows how I correlated the styles to what section. Also ensure there is a break at the end of the information, this will come in handy later.

I set my text box where I am going to want it, and set up two columns.

Now we need to set the Data Merge fields.

using the right side click window from the palate, and Select Data Source, AKA the .csv file from earlier.

Now, highlight Last and then click on the last name field of the data merge, you should get:

Follow suit for the rest. Oops, I forgot to put a place for the postal codes. Well, let’s do that now. See we can still add steps for the most part. I also have the second address somewhat out of order in the excel file, but it’s fine for how we are doing this. I did this on purpose to show you a bit of flexibility. We should have the following:

Now let us have the computer do what it is meant to do, and make our lives easier. On the pull out menu from the palate, select Create Merged Document. We want:

Now we have our old file which we can save, close and ignore; and a multipage unthreaded document with all types of holes. Let’s fix that. First the threading.

Wait, did that do anything outside of showing us a progress bar? yes. Here’s a quick way to fix that select Edit/Find/Change (Command F)

That’s pretty much what you want, but for future reference, using the @ symbol shows a drop down menu. Use that and fill in Frame Break for Find, and two paragraph breaks for Change to. This is a great tip also to rid your document of double spaces after the period that some people still do (Which is wrong, you only need a single space these days since the computer already puts a space and a half after a period). In fact all you need to do is use the Find/Change to help fix the holes.

I really hope that helps. If you find yourself needing help contact me and when I can, I’ll try to help you out.

Contact me at cmykhelper (at) id8tion.com.