Requirements

• The placeholder text can be located in any text frame, along any other text
• You can choose any text you like (a-z, 0-9, _-)

Make sure that even the longest text from your datasource will have enough room in the text frame provided, or overset text will be produced.

A text placeholder will inject text from various sources into your layout in the merge process.

These sources can be one or a combination of:

• Datasource content (Changes for each record)
• Static text (Always the same)
• Sequence (Different types of counting numbers)
• Automator workflow (for editing outside of MyDataMerge – learn more here)
• Custom (java-)script (learn more here)

To add an element, open the placeholder by double clicking it (or click the pen icon), then add an element by clicking the plus icon:

Add the element and the appropriate editor will open (e.g. datasource element):

Once you selected or entered the required data, the element becomes valid (green check)

Once every placeholder is valid, you are able to export.

Notes:

• You can combine different elements here by adding them (plus icon above the eye icon) and drag & drop them up or down. The result will always be shown in the preview on the right.
• Additionally every element has some settings (gear icon) which will provide a wide range of tools to transform your data (e.g. strip whitespaces, add space before or after and so on)

Resizing text is helpful if it would otherwise produce overset text OR you want to raise the size of text to always fit with a maximum font size into the text frame.

• Make sure you are editing a text placeholder [1].
• Open the style panel [2].
• There you can select one of three resizing options [3].

Fit frame to text

This will reduce or enlarge the text frame to fit the text inside. It will NOT change the size of the text itself. This is a standard option in InDesign.

Before and after merge with fit frame to text:

Fit text to frame

This will scale the text size of ALL text inside the placeholders text frame up OR down to best fit into the text frame its located in.

Before and after merge with fit text to frame::

Fit text to frame (decrease only)

This will (only) scale down the text size of ALL text inside the placeholders text frame if its too long to fit in the frame. This option will make overset text visible again without changing the text frame size.

Before merge – font size 12pt – and after merge with fit text to frame (decrease only) – font size 9.3pt:

If you want to export to interactive PDF files go to export > filetype and select the preferred filetype from the dropdown.

You can set a static filename in Export > Filetype > “Static filename” field.

With static filenames, every file will get the same name and a counting number will be attached. For example if you define static filename to be “mydatamerge” then files will be named like this:

• mydatamerge_1
• mydatamerge_2
• mydatamerge_3
• and so on

Please note that static filenames only allow a-z, 0-9, – and _ characters. Other characters will be removed or replaced.