Once you open a placeholders editor you will see that you can select a replacement type to show MyDataMerge what kind of data you want to inject [1] to that placeholder and you can select a setup [2]. Initially there’s a setup called “Initial setup” you can work with. But you can add as many others as you like.

In the center area (“Add item to ‘Initial setup'”) you can configure the output to be injected in the merge process dynamically. Each setup can have custom style settings (brush icon) and a custom hyperlink setting (chain icon).

By default, only the selected setup is used for the merge process. But setups become really powerful once you add them in a row (if first fails use second then third …) (path icon) or use them based on conditions (“If ‘First Name’ is ‘John’ then use this, otherwise use that).

For every placeholder you can add more than one setup.

If you have a well formed database with no missing data, usually one setup is enough. More than one setup will come in handy in situations where this isn’t the case or where you want to apply different styles.

Example:

You have a subject line in a letter where you want to output a salutation and last name e.g. “Dear Forrest” where “Forrest” is the first name and comes from the database and “Dear” is a static text. You can do this easily with a simple setup of your placeholder:

In the below image you can see the setup to output “Dear [First Name]”, a static text for “Dear ” [1] and a dynamic datasource element for the first name [2]. The output can be checked in the preview [3]:

Now imagine you don’t have a first name, then you’d like to output “To whom it may concern” which you can do with a second setup. So we add another setup here and give it an appropriate name [1]:

Then we configure it to output the static text “To whom it may concern”.

Right now, MyDataMerge would output “To whom it may concern” for every data record, because it’s the currently selected setup. To allow multiple setups to be processed you need to enable the process chain [1 + 2] as shown in the image below. Then all setups in the right table [3] will be processed from top down. If first setup fails (e.g. because first name is missing) then use second one and so on.

You can move unused setups to the left table, they will have no effect there. If the last setup in the right table fails, the “Action if last setup fails” will be executed which you can select at the bottom.

Note: You can add more control by adding conditions (on when it should be executed) to each setup.

While the default behaviour will toggle each setup in the process chain in a row (first fails, use second, second fails, use third …), conditions will trigger a setup if conditions are met. To enable conditions you have to enable process chain first [1]. Then the conditions icon becomes visible [2]. Enable conditions and add the conditions you require for the selected setup [3] to get triggered.

Once you have conditions enabled you will see which setup has conditions in the process chain.

Please note that even if you add conditions to a setup they still will be processed in the order they are arranged in the process chain.

According to the above image this would be:

• “Custom configuration 1” -> Conditions met for the current data record? YES -> Execute it. NO -> Continue with the next.
• “Custom configuration 2” -> Directly executed because no conditions are set. Does it fail? -> Continue with “Action if last setup fails”.

It is always a good idea to have a setup with no condition as last one.

To advice MyDataMerge to download images please follow these instructions

1. Make sure your image placeholder has the right type “Replace with image” [1]
2. Add static text element with the base URL to your images, e.g. “https://www.myserver/path/to/” [2]
3. Add a datasource element and select the column with the image names [3], this will add the image name to the above URL “https://www.myserver/path/to/myimage.jpg”
4. Open the settings (gear icon), and activate “Download image” [4]. You may additionally select a folder where to download the images to

Issues that may arise

• By default, MyDataMerge checks for file name extensions of images. e.g. “https://www.myserver/path/to/myimage.jpg” -> .jpg – If it doesn’t find any, an error will be thrown. You can disable this behaviour in the preferences > editor > Disable file extension check for downloaded images
• If images change online, MyDataMerge doesn’t know that. At the first time an image is downloaded, it will be cached and not re-downloaded by default (for a better performance). You can force a download everytime by activating “Force download on each export” in the image settings (check the image above).

With CSV selected in Export > Filetype, MyDataMerge will export a Adobe® Indesign®’s data merge compatible CSV file. Use this option if you don’t want to merge with MyDataMerge but want to use MyDataMerges ability to customise the data.

Please note: Both CSV options …

• CSV (export only) – Exports a CSV file
• CSV (export and link) – Exports a CSV file and links it with your data in InDesign so you can continue with the data merge there

… cannot handle MyDataMerge specific actions like:

• Applying styles
• Applying the last action if a setup fails
• Applying GREP actions
• Applying Hyperlinks
• Use Automator workflows after export

If you need any of these please use MyDataMerge for merging your data.