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  • 2022-04-14 at 4:12 pm #16827
    Nick Thompson
    Member

    I am evaluating MyDataMerge and so far looks like a great product.

    I have what I think is quite an advanced requirement, so before investing in the product and training, would you be able to let me know if my project is feasible with the product?

    The layout is a name badge with a personal agenda on the back (which is sown in the image here https://ibb.co/fnqd0ND.

    We use a table for this, which allows the line between agenda items.

    Sometimes a line has no content for a person. In this case the whole row (all 3 columns) is removed, and content below it shifted up.

    If there are no rows for a particular day/date, the bold date text and the red line under it is removed, and content below it shifted up.

    I know this can be done with standard paragraphs using conditions, but can it be done for a table? If not, is there another way to achieve this?

    Secondly, I have approx 1000 records, 95 fields to merge per record, on an M1 Mac Mini. Am I asking too much of MyDataMerge? Can you give me any indication of speed? I’ve watched some of the videos where you merge just a few records, and it looks like it takes a few seconds per record for a fairly basic merge.

    Thanks in advance for your help!

    Nick

    2022-04-14 at 4:20 pm #16828
    Pat
    Staff

    Hi Nick,

    thanks for getting in touch.

    I have some additional questions:

    • How many “records” belong to one badge/page? Is this ongoing (as many as fit) or fixed (5 each)?
    • Can you show me a few sample records in your database (need to understand how it is structured)

    Best
    John

    Official MyDataMerge Team

    2022-04-14 at 5:12 pm #16829
    Nick Thompson
    Member

    Thanks for coming back to me John.

    It’s two pages per record. i.e. each person attending an event gets one name badge, with name etc on the front and personalised agenda on the reverse.

    Can I email you the data?

    Just to summarise it’s got columns like this:

    First name
    Last name
    Company name
    Language
    Date1    (e.g. ‘Sabado, 22 d junio’ in the image I sent)
    R1C1   (=row 1, column 1 – e.g. ‘Tempo libre’ in the image I sent)
    R1C2  (=row 2, column 2 – blank in the image – but this row would still show because there’s data in R1C1)
    R1C3  (=row 3, column 2 – blank in the image)
    R2C1  (‘Almuerzo’ in the image)
    R2C2  (‘Restaurantes con cupones’)
    R2C3  (blank)
    R3C1
    R3C2
    R3C3 etc

    Approx 90 fields / columns in total per record.

    2022-04-14 at 5:28 pm #16830
    Pat
    Staff
    This reply has been marked as private.

    Official MyDataMerge Team

    2022-04-14 at 8:44 pm #16831
    Pat
    Staff

    Hi Nick

    after checking you layout and datasource i can now say:

    • MyDataMerge can handle the data part – although we wouldn’t use tables (instead a good structured inline text flow)
    • The cover page cannot be handled – especially applying different designs/masters is currently not possible

    Unfortunately

    Regards
    Pat

    Official MyDataMerge Team

    2022-04-20 at 10:09 am #16842
    Nick Thompson
    Member

    Thank you Pat for the considered reply.

    I am surprised at this regarding the cover page. Presumably you mean the page that has the name on it (the front of each badge).

    From my previous research I’d noted that MyDataMerge can dynamically merge images (although I couldn’t find a list of supported file types), and dynamically apply formatting (e.g. change text to white if the background image is dark). So what part of the cover page requirement do you suspect is not possible?

    I know we have done it a particular way with DesignMerge where we swap out the whole page dynamically, but I am open to other ways of achieving the same result.

    Thanks and best wishes

    Nick

    2022-04-20 at 4:57 pm #16844
    Pat
    Staff

    Hi Nick

    i forwarded it to Stefan, he will contact you soon (he’s the expert for tricky stuff)

    ;)

    Official MyDataMerge Team

    2022-04-21 at 12:47 pm #16846
    Pat
    Staff

    Hi there,

    i received feedback:

    “We basically can handle everything including setting of individual cover page (with name) and exporting single files with custom filename. One thing we can’t handle at the same time is removing lines (if empty) and having linebreaks inside of a column content (if content is too long e.g. for kyrillic content r1c3).  According to this we can either …

    Remove lines if empty and shrink text to fit space (which basically produces really small text in some of the cases we have like 5pt). If you could shorten texts to fit a one liner in the available space this could be the one click solution.

    OR

    Not removing lines and include linbreaks in columns (which is also not very nice)

    But thats the point.

    Regards
    Stefan”

    So its up to you to decide …

    Regards
    Pat

    Official MyDataMerge Team

    2022-05-10 at 10:46 am #16877
    Nick Thompson
    Member

    Pat, thank you for getting that info from Stefan. Sorry for my delayed reply.

    After checking it seems we don’t have line breaks in the data so I’m not sure what that was referring to. We do have text that wraps on to a second line, but only right at the end – the very last row. We previously marked this row as ‘not for shrinking’. Could we do the same with MyDataMerge?

    Any thoughts on my speed question (original post). I know it’s not possible to say how long it’s going to take – I just don’t want to invest in learning the product and then find it crumbles with the amount of data and logic I’m using it for. If it took 2 hours to merge it wouldn’t be an issue. If it took a day, or crashed every time I ran it, it would! We are ideally looking to create one big PDF rather than individual ones.

    Lastly, are there any options for extended support if we needed it? At a cost?

    Many thanks again

    Nick

     

    2022-05-14 at 7:39 am #16879
    Pat
    Staff

    Hi Nick,

    i had to consult Stefan to answer:

    Its the textwraps on a second line that cause the issues. With MyDataMerge you have the limit to either have only single line text in contents OR the possibility to remove whole lines if they are empty.

    Both doesn’t work with MyDataMerge, i’m sorry.

    For the speed it depends on what kind of files you need. InDesign documents are faster. PDFs slower (need to get rendered). InDesign Documents go for 35 Minutes for 1000 documents approximately on our M1-Mini machines. This can also differ on the machine you use.

    Official MyDataMerge Team

    2022-06-16 at 4:00 pm #16915
    Pat
    Staff

    Closed due to no response

    Official MyDataMerge Team

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