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.

You can add Hyperlinks dynamically to your placeholders, no matter if its a text, image or QR-Code placeholder. After applying hyperlinks, a reader can click on the element to open the hyperlink.

Note: Hyperlinks will only work if you export to InDesign files or interactive PDF files.

How to add Hyperlinks

Hyperlinks are part of a setup – this gives you the full advantage of a setups flexibility (e.g. to apply different hyperlinks to the same placeholder based on conditions). To add a hyperlink, open the placeholder in the editor and click the hyperlink icon [1] to open the hyperlink panel. Then enable the hyperlink [2] and start with your configuration:

Shared Hyperlink destination
This is only useful if you have multiple hyperlinks with the same target and need to continue working with your InDesign layout. With this option turned on, only one hyperlink target will be created in your layout document and be shared for multiple hyperlinks. With this option turned off, a new target will be created for each hyperlink.

Highlight
Selects the highlight effect of the hyperlink

PDF Display
Selects the kind of frame around the hyperlink. Selecting “Visible Rectangle” will unlock the options below to further style the frame.

Width
The width of the rectangle (thin, medium or thick)

Format
The format of the rectangle (solid or dashed)

Color
The RGB color of the rectangle. All RGB swatches (and only RGB) from your document are imported automatically and will be selectable next to “Document default”.

Configuration

The configuration button opens another editor to configure the hyperlinks content. You can select a hyperlink type and edit every item like a text placeholder to inject data into a hyperlink.

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 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.