Requirements

• The placeholder text must be located in a single text frame (not linked with any other)
• The frame can have any proportions
• You can choose any text you like (a-z, 0-9, _-)
• The placeholder text including tags must be the only content of the text frame (be careful with spaces)
• If you want to use Autolink you can add @ to identify the placeholder as image, e.g. <<@image>> (for using Autolink you also have to make sure that the label of the placeholder and the title of your datasource colum must match (in the example above, the datasource column title must be “image”)

Note: The position/alignment of the text inside the frame is not taken into account. You can control the alignment and fitting in the configuration.

An image placeholder will inject images based on file paths 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)

Open the placeholder by double clicking it (or click the pen icon), then the editor will open. First of all, make sure that “Replace with image” is selected [1]. Then add one or more elements to get file paths to your images. In the below example [2] a datasource element is added, where column “Image” is selected (as this column contains paths to the image files). If the element is valid (green check) and a valid image path is given, you will see a preview on the right [3]. If the preview doesn’t appear, you might need to grant access to the image folder for MyDataMerge – click the “Grant access” button in this case. By deactivating the switch “Show image”, MyDataMerge will output the file path in the preview instead.

After access is granted, you will see the image appear in the preview on the right:

When to not use object styling

If you only have one setup in your placeholder, styling will be applied to every record. As styling slows down the merge process it’s more efficient to apply the style in your layout directly in this case.

How das object styling work?

MyDataMerge imports all your character and paragraph styles from your layout document.

You can apply object styles to change background color, borders, effects and many more attributes an frames/text frames – so you can apply an object style both to an image, QR-Code or text placeholder [1]. Open the style panel [2] in the placeholder editor and select the object style you want to apply.

No matter what kind of placeholder you edit, an object style will always be applied to the frame of the placeholder.

Note: In case of applying an object style to a text placeholder – if you have multiple text placeholders in the same text frame and all or some of them apply a different object style, only the last applied object style will be visible in the merged document. It is a good practice to apply an object style only for one placeholder per frame.

Frequently asked questions

What happens if I change an applied style in the layout document?
MyDataMerge will use the updated style in the next merge.

What happens if I delete an applied style?
If you have the style applied, it will be removed and you will be notified of the removal after the updated layout is imported.

If you want to export to JPEG 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.