Publisher data merge sub categories

[dtmp]

I'm creating a directory from a xls file. I've figured out how to get the info (name, address, phone, etc.) into the document with data merge, but the listings have multiple subcategories that need to be separated by headings.

e.g. I have listings for Advertising/Printing then listings for Agriculture/Farm, Banking, and so on. 

How do I format the AP layout to accept this field where ever it occurs? i.e. Have a heading, then a number of listings, next heading, listings and so on. 

Or is this something I'll need to manually build from each subcategory data merge. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by dtmp
wrong program listed

[walt.farrell]

Question: You refer to Designer a couple of times. Do you mean Publisher? Designer doesn't support Data Merge.

Edit: In any case, I don't think you can do that with the current Data merge capabilities, except by having one XLSX file per heading, and creating one document per heading, and then merging the documents when you're done.

[loukash]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Designer doesn't support Data Merge.

For the record, you can always open a Designer document with Publisher and add its features as well.

[dtmp]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Question: You refer to Designer a couple of times. Do you mean Publisher? Designer doesn't support Data Merge.

yes, brain was thinking 'InDesign' maybe.

[dtmp]

I tried using multiple data merge documents for each subcategory, but I think the problem is that you can only have one data merge per page. (some of the categories only have a few entries).

It appears the solution is to do one big data merge, then manually separate the subcategories in the generated document. It saves a bit of time, but that going to be a lot of editing and moving around not to mention when a change is made to the merge document later on. c'est la vie

[BertD]

I have a similar kind of issue.

I'm making a programme for a film festival. Data merge works well, I get everything so that's fine.

The problem I have is that there are different categories. Each category needs an image and title so the first page of a new category needs to be half a page and any following page take up full pages until the next category comes along.

So ideally the data merge setup would be half a page layout followed by a full page layout with an option to set to be the main one.

It wouldn't even have to automatically find the next category, you could use the range setup for that to get each category out of the csv.

What would also be a handy option is instead of creating a new Publisher document when creating the data merge, it would do so in the current document. Could use master pages as the data merge template.

 

Bert

 

 

 

[dtmp]

You're right BertD, Data Merge could use a few more bells and whistles to make it more useful.

What I ended up doing was manipulate my spreadsheet to help the editing go a bit easier.

I put all the entries into one big spreadsheet (almost 350 in all). For each sub-category I placed a dummy entry (I discovered that the data merge ignores blank entries). That left a blank area to add the sub category heading to each section. Of course, I had to go back and forth a few times to get the entries to land on the right page without orphans. (see example pic)

Hopefully, the changes will not be too exhaustive.