Designing labels: How to auto-generate numbers (Serializing).

[BenVang]

I am producing Raffle Tickets for clubs. There are 5 tickets on an A4 page and each ticket is sequentially numbered, with the number being shown twice - once on the ticket and once on the ticket tab. The numbering sequence in this case starts at 2021-001.

Is there a way to have the numbering automatically insert and advance in the two fields on each ticket, and continue on as many pages as needed?

At the moment I dublicate each page of 5 tickets and manually increase the number.

Thanks,

Ben

[walt.farrell]

Should be easy to do with Publisher's Data Merge function and an xlsx file containing all the numbers.

[MojoTojo]

I'm designing multiple labels which we will print on a letter sized paper and cut up. One paper will have around 30 or so labels and each label needs to have a unique number serialized from 00001 and onward.

[carl123]

You need the Data Merge function but that is only available in Affinity Publisher

[AlanPickup]

A free program I use for printing raffle tickets for the charities I do work FOC for may help you get what you are after https://www.raffleprinter.com/cardprinter/ 

[Andy05]

You can create a single label in Publisher and use the page-number feature on that. Change their style to one with leading zeroes. Create as many pages as you need labels.

When printing, use the N-up feature in order to print multiple pages onto one page. You might have to adjust the original label's size so it includes the margins needed for getting placed correctly onto pre-cut label printing papers.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, Andy05 said:

When printing, use the N-up feature in order to print multiple pages onto one page.

Or you can work with nested artboards, sharing an afdesign document between Designer and Publisher for whichever specific tools you need.
Similar to what I've demoed here:

 

[Andy05]

14 minutes ago, loukash said:

Or you can work with nested artboards,

True, but it might get a bit confusing, if you try that with 100 or 1000 labels. 

[v_kyr]

10 hours ago, MojoTojo said:

I'm designing multiple labels which we will print on a letter sized paper and cut up. One paper will have around 30 or so labels and each label needs to have a unique number serialized from 00001 and onward.

Without Publisher and it's data merge, one would have to export the labels doc in an outside of Affinity editable format (as SVG XML text format), where each label needs to have some pseudo placeholder text for the number then (as a unique layer name/id). So the labels inside the SVG file could be edited/altered/manipulated by some script or little program then.

One would read in the SVG file, inititialize a counter variable for incrementation accordingly and iterate (with a for loop etc.) over the placeholder text occurences, where each placeholder occurence would be replaced by the incremented counter variable (with left padded zeros) as text.

### --- python sample for counter & autoincrement ---

def counter(start, interval):
    count = start
    while True:
        yield count
        count += interval

count = counter(start=1, interval=1)

def autoIncrement():
    return str(count.next()).zfill(5)
  
### -------- test increment --------

>> print autoIncrement()
00001
>> print autoIncrement()
00002
>> print autoIncrement()
00003
>> print autoIncrement()
00004
>> ...

Afterwards when the SVG file(s) have been altered you would reopen them in Affinity, check and print them.

[h_d]

If you're on macOS I can drop you an AppleScript that will generate a .csv for the ticket numbers (any starting number, any number of tickets) which could be used as the basis of a data merge.

[BenVang]

On 4/18/2021 at 11:06 AM, walt.farrell said:

Should be easy to do with Publisher's Data Merge function and an xlsx file containing all the numbers.

I thought of that, but seems to be just as much work as individually numbering.

21 hours ago, Andy05 said:

You can create a single label in Publisher and use the page-number feature on that. Change their style to one with leading zeroes. Create as many pages as you need labels.

When printing, use the N-up feature in order to print multiple pages onto one page. You might have to adjust the original label's size so it includes the margins needed for getting placed correctly onto pre-cut label printing papers.

I didn't think of that, but have actually used this method for printing numbered labels with another program.
Will give that a fly in Publisher.

Thanks.

[lacerto]

(...)

[bananafrenchtoast]

On 4/17/2021 at 9:06 PM, walt.farrell said:

Should be easy to do with Publisher's Data Merge function and an xlsx file containing all the numbers.

What are the steps to do this on AD publisher's Data merge? 

[Komatös]

Hello @bananafrenchtoast and welcome to the forums.

AD stand here for Affinity Designer. But back to your question,

There are many videos on Youtube that describe the data merge function of Affinity Publisher in detail. A very detailed video is this one: