First off, I am very happy with MyDataMerge, and appreciate what you’ve done here. Now my problem/suggestion:

I have multiple INDD documents that are very similar and use the same data source, each needing its own separate PDF and InDesign merged document. There are 3 different menu styles for 35 different locations, most of which have subtle differences in the base InDesign file, but all or most of the same placeholders. Right now, I’m using a separate setup for each menu and location, meaning over 100 MDM files.

Each of these has about 50 placeholders that point to currency-formatted cells in Excel. I kept the currency formatting in Excel (instead of MDM) becuase of the tedium of changing the settings for each placeholder. That works fine for most of the data, but for the placeholders that are in line with other text, i.e., “Large: <<lp>> • Small: <<sp>>”. For some reason, trailing whitespace is added to the data imported into those placeholders, so I end up with “Large: $15.99  • Small: $12.99 “. So, I’m still stuck manually changing the settings for those 20 placeholders in each document to remove the whitespace. With my limited knowledge of MDM, I can think of two things that would help my issue:

A default setting to remove any leading or trailing whitespace from ALL placeholders. Or maybe just a default settings panel that applies to all placeholders unless changed at the field level. I add all necessary whitespace in the InDesign file, so I never want it included in my import from Excel, and to be able to tell MDM to remove whitespace from everything would be great. FWIW, I thought about setting up something with Grep, but Grep is already giving me grief with non-traditional whitespaces, so I am steering clear of that unless necessary.

Along the same line… as mentioned, each of my files uses generally the same placeholders. When creating a new setup, I open a previous MyDataMerge file and start there for the new document. It would help to unload an InDesign document and replace it with a very similar document, without losing placeholder settings for those that are the same in the new document.

Either of the above solutions would make my life easier.  Or, maybe my entire process could be more efficient, and I’m missing a simple solution. I’m open to suggestions!

Thanks!