Requirements

• The placeholder text must be located in a single text frame (not linked with any other)
• The text frame must be a square (same height and width)
• The placeholder text including tags must be the only content of the text frame (be careful with spaces)
• You can choose any text you like (a-z, 0-9, _-)
• If you want to use Autolink you can add # to identify the placeholder as QR-Code, e.g. <<#qrcode>>

Coloring QR-Codes

To color your QR-Codes, you just need to apply a color to your text frame and the text. The text frame’s color will be the background color of the QR-Code, the text color will result in the QR-Codes color itself.

Best practice: Even if you don’t need a background color (e.g. cause it is white) you still should set a color. This speeds up the merge process.

A QR-Code placeholder will add a specific type of QR-Code (vCard, URL, Text) with content 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 Qr-Code placeholder by double clicking it (or click the pen icon), then the editor will open. First of all, make sure that “Replace with QR-Code” is selected [2]. If you cannot select it, you didn’t follow the requirements for a QR-Code placeholder in the layout. Please check “Add placeholders to your layout” section above.

Then click “Add item to initial setup” [3]. This will automatically add a QR-Code Element and open the QR-Code editor.

Select the type of QR-Code you want to create [4]. Please note that some QR-Code types have optional items [5] which you can enable if you need them.

Double click the single items to edit them. The content of a QR-Code is always text, so the single items are handled like a standard text placeholder which you fill from various sources.

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)

Once you configured all required (and optional) items and the setup is valid (green check), you can exit the QR-Code editor with the back button [6] …

… and see a preview of the QR-Code [7].

If you want to export to PDF files go to export > filetype and select the preferred filetype from the dropdown [1]. Note that you have to select a PDF preset [2]. They are directly imported form Adobe InDesign and can be updated with the circled arrow icon.

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.