Data Merge in Publisher

[polochon]

View menu-> Studio-> Fields.
Insert a text zone in the first box and insert the fields there from the Studio

[StuffaPalooza]

54 minutes ago, polochon said:

View menu-> Studio-> Fields.
Insert a text zone in the first box and insert the fields there from the Studio

Thank you @polochon. This got me where I need to be.

[Cintia]

Hello, 

I need to work with data merge, and i wanted to know if they doing to implement it in a new version of publisher.

Thank you.

[Patrick Connor]

@Cintia

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

The next free Affinity Publisher update (version 1.9.0) will include data merge functions.

After you buy the software you can try the beta version downloadable from the links in theses threads for Windows betas and Mac betas

[polochon]

@Cintia Available in Publisher Beta only

[unpixel]

Any chance someone kind enough to demonstrate this visually with a quick YouTube video? I keep re-reading this, but I'm clearly not doing it right.

[polochon]

@unpixel

[Loquos]

I think I'm missing something. I can get the Data Merge fields set up just fine, formatted the way I want them, and have it create a page of merged data. But I'm missing a setting that tells it to create a new page should the amount of entries not all fit on one page. I have .csv files that will span multiple pages when processed through Data Merge, and I'd hate to have to only do one page at a time!

Is this a feature of the beta? Is it possible to connect Data Merge frames or otherwise tell the program to duplicate the process on subsequent pages until all the entries have been created? Because I'm not seeing a way to do that.

[Loquos]

10 minutes ago, Loquos said:

I think I'm missing something. I can get the Data Merge fields set up just fine, formatted the way I want them, and have it create a page of merged data. But I'm missing a setting that tells it to create a new page should the amount of entries not all fit on one page. I have .csv files that will span multiple pages when processed through Data Merge, and I'd hate to have to only do one page at a time!

Is this a feature of the beta? Is it possible to connect Data Merge frames or otherwise tell the program to duplicate the process on subsequent pages until all the entries have been created? Because I'm not seeing a way to do that.

Ok... never mind. I just remembered that to do this in Adobe InDesign you had to start with a file with only ONE page, and then it would create others as needed.

So I tried that in Affinity Publisher and it worked just fine. 🙂

[Loquos]

Now we're just missing a feature to ignore empty cells. 

And is there any way to merge all the text cells afterwards? I ask because for my use some cells end up having more lines than others, and it would be nice to be able to adjust the flow of text without having to move every single cell individually.

Yes, I realize this is still in beta. I'm just wondering if this is in the works or if it's something I missed during my self-taught crash course.

[polochon]

With IenDesign I never managed to avoid empty lines, although the option was checked ...

[Loquos]

4 minutes ago, polochon said:

With IenDesign I never managed to avoid empty lines, although the option was checked ...

Yes, that was a problem in InDesign as well. I know Microsoft Word will ignore them, if you're doing a data merge there. It would be nice to have a way to ignore empty cells in Publisher as well.

[polochon]

NEVER MICROSOFT, RATHER DIE!

[TiborUdvari]

Is it possible to pull images from http, https URLs? This is a big drawback of InDesign.

[polochon]

Nope…

[Gregan]

I'm new to Affinity but have experience using other publishing packages. I want to do "data merging" (mail-merging) in Publisher using a password protected .xlsx spreadsheet but there doesn't seem to be a way of entering the password and password protected spreadsheets don't seem to work with Publisher; if the password is removed, it does then work but this is not satisfactory. I have observed that, unlike other programs (e.g. PagePlus and Word), you don't have to have open the spreadsheet before performing the data merge; having to have the spreadsheet open is where the password gets used in these other programs but even having opened the password protected spreadsheet before attempting data merge with Publisher doesn't fix the problem. Is there a solution short of removing the password?

Gregan

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Gregan said:

Is there a solution short of removing the password?

Not that I know of.

And welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, Gregan said:

Is there a solution short of removing the password?

In addition to walt's reply, I would like to point out that there are usually good reasons that some files are protected by passwords.

[Gregan]

Replying to Old Bruce, I agree - I don't want to have to remove the password as it contains details which should be protected. Affinity needs to provide the means to handle password protected Excel files - I would have thought that this was a basic design requirement. I was hoping to discover that there is a way to handle this with the password in place!

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Gregan said:

Replying to Old Bruce, I agree - I don't want to have to remove the password as it contains details which should be protected. Affinity needs to provide the means to handle password protected Excel files - I would have thought that this was a basic design requirement. I was hoping to discover that there is a way to handle this with the password in place!

There's an implication of @Old Bruce's reply (or an inference to be drawn from it) that may have escaped your notice, though.

If the Excel data is sensitive enough to require a password, the data-merged files you produce from it are similarly sensitive. So, how are you going to password-protect the .afpub file you create during data merge, or the file(s) you export from Publisher?

On the other hand, if your Publisher file won't be sensitive, that would imply that it doesn't contain the sensitive data from the Excel file. So you could generate a new Excel file, without the sensitive data, and feed that into Data Merge.

[polochon]

I didn't want to get involved in the conversation, but Walt's answer is smack in the corner of common sense, as they say in France

[Gregan]

Hi Walt, I don't think I agree with your analysis. The situation I am dealing with is a shared Excel .xlsx database in Dropbox; the mail-merged Affinity file is used locally where it isn't going to be reshared and it contains data which is appropriate for the situation - these are not letters I'm dealing with but other documents which are generally not shared. Because of GDPR, the spreadsheet in Dropbox has to be protected as it contains names and contact details of folk.

It's a pity that Affinity files can't be password protected, either, but at least they should cope with password protected data source files like Excel. Folk assume that Affinity is always used for similar purposes - my use is possibly unusual. Serif's now obsolete product PagePlus could be used for such purposes as it relied upon the Excel source file being opened before the PagePlus mail-merge "template" file was opened; the action of opening the Excel file required the password to be entered in Excel so the necessary protection was achieved.

[walt.farrell]

4 minutes ago, Gregan said:

I don't think I agree with your analysis. The situation I am dealing with is a shared Excel .xlsx database in Dropbox; the mail-merged Affinity file is used locally where it isn't going to be reshared and it contains data which is appropriate for the situation - these are not letters I'm dealing with but other documents which are generally not shared. Because of GDPR, the spreadsheet in Dropbox has to be protected as it contains names and contact details of folk.

So your file won't contain those names or contact details, or other GDPR-controlled data? If it won't, you could subset the data as I suggested. Annoying, but possible.

But if your files will contain that information, doesn't GDPR still apply, and wouldn't it require the protection I mentioned, whether you intend to share the files or not?

And if GDPR wouldn't require password protection on your new file "because you don't intend to share it" then you could create a copy of the full Excel file, without a password, for temporary use and make sure you delete it afterwards. That way it wouldn't be shared, and wouldn't need the password. Again, annoying but possible.

Note: I agree it would be nice if Affinity allowed one to enter a password when Placing a file or when performing data merge. But I think it's also important to consider all the security aspects of the data.

 

[Gregan]

Walt, the mail-merge Affinity output file would contain the sensitive data but it will be deleted after printing; it's a pity one can't mail-merge directly to a printer, as you can with MS Word mail-merges; I'd use Word if I could bt Word doesn't handle mail-merges with data-fetched images very well. Of course, GDPR precautions need to be continued with the printed material but it is used locally and in the control of the people sharing it. I'm fully conversant with the GDPR requirements - the vulnerable part of the process is the sharing of the database via Dropbox, hence the password protection requirement. As you will know, password protected .xlsx files are also encrypted by the password protection. The sensitivity of the data isn't in the league of state secrets (!) but protection is necessary to comply with GDPR requirements.

[dkenner]

I'm a bit confused here.  The data classification seems to require a password protected file.  OK, this meets the local security requirements for data at rest, because Dropbox has been deemed to have inadequate protections, or the access controls are not being managed adequately.   It also seems that password protection also meets the local requirements for data transmission.  

I'll ignore my feelings that password protecting an Excel file is completely inadequate for protecting information at the Canadian "Protected B" level.  I presume that this is private data, and not national interest, so using the Canadian standard derived from both the Privacy Act and PIPEDA, and supported by NIST based standards and guidance.

If Dropbox had adequate management of the user controlled access permisisons, you should not need to password this file, unless the other two end environments are deemed to be that untrustworthy.  I'm missing something here, as Affinity is being asked to participate in something that would not pass a security assessment and authorization process at the levels being suggested.  There are too many possible holes elsewhere.  

I presume that it is not being suggested that APub should be able to access a password protected excel file with Affinity being given the password itself?