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 JPEG files go to export > filetype and select the preferred filetype from the dropdown.

To configure dynamic file names go to Export > Filetype and make sure “One document per record” [1] is activated. Then a button “Filenames setup” [2] appears. Click it to configure your filenames.

If you click the “Filenames setup” button you can then select the filetype to setup custom naming. If you e. g. export to PDF files and keep a copy of your InDesign files you can define both the names for the PDF files and the InDesign files. Double click a row and enable it. Then you can configure it like a placeholder.