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 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.

GREP text actions allow you to search and replace specific strings matching custom search patterns with other strings or patterns AFTER the merge process is completed. They are applied to all documents generated.

Go to Export > Extras > GREP text

Here you can activate or deactivate your configured GREP text replacements. To edit them click on the pen icon of each row, to add new ones click on the gear icon in the bottom right. This will take you to the preferences where you can add new actions or delete existing ones (Note: Predefined actions cannot be deleted. They are flagged with [System] at the end of the name):

GREP text actions are stored locally on your machine. Only activated actions will be added to project files.