Inline merge is a powerful tool if you want to merge inside a textframe and take advantage of flowing content. You cannot use this on an existing layout but on an empty textframe (Check requirements). After the merge is done you may copy the whole content of the textframe and insert it into your final layout.

Requirements

• Make sure you only have one page in your document, spreads turned off
• Make sure you only have one unique text frame on that page and nothing else

Inline merge text

• Prepare your document like mentioned above in „Setup layout for inline merge“

You can add your placeholder directly into the one unique text frame:

This will repeat this content one after another.

Or you can create a textframe, insert your placeholders there and copy/paste that text frame as anchored object into the one unique text frame:

This gives you more control as the text frame keeps it proportions when its duplicated during the inline merge.

To advice MyDataMerge to download images please follow these instructions

1. Make sure your image placeholder has the right type “Replace with image” [1]
2. Add static text element with the base URL to your images, e.g. “https://www.myserver/path/to/” [2]
3. Add a datasource element and select the column with the image names [3], this will add the image name to the above URL “https://www.myserver/path/to/myimage.jpg”
4. Open the settings (gear icon), and activate “Download image” [4]. You may additionally select a folder where to download the images to

Issues that may arise

• By default, MyDataMerge checks for file name extensions of images. e.g. “https://www.myserver/path/to/myimage.jpg” -> .jpg – If it doesn’t find any, an error will be thrown. You can disable this behaviour in the preferences > editor > Disable file extension check for downloaded images
• If images change online, MyDataMerge doesn’t know that. At the first time an image is downloaded, it will be cached and not re-downloaded by default (for a better performance). You can force a download everytime by activating “Force download on each export” in the image settings (check the image above).

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.

Go to Export > Multiple Records and activate “MR in one text frame (inline merge)” [1]. If you cannot select it, please check again if your layout meets the requirements (in step “Setup layout for inline merge”).