Data Merge: Resize Font to fit Text Frame

[lastingMadness]

Hi Affinity Community. I am currently working on a portfolio that includes profiles of different people  (Names, Stats, Etc). I have been using the data merge feature in Affinity Publisher to populate data in my profile template. The problem I have been having is that some names are too large for my text frame and are hidden. Is there a way to have text from a data merge automatically resize itself to fit a text frame?

[lacerto]

(...)

[h_d]

I don't think there's any way of doing this automatically.

(A purist might argue that it would lead to typographical inconsistency and, given the small type sizes, a perceived diminishing of the importance of longer names.

Who's more important?

One alternative might be to design the data merge document based on the length of the longest name, possibly allowing for two or three lines of text for really long ones.)

[Failix]

32 minutes ago, h_d said:

One alternative might be to design the data merge document based on the length of the longest name, possibly allowing for two or three lines of text for really long ones.)

You speak my heart! Never commit to a design before you know all the content.

[lacerto]

(...)

[Failix]

Of course, you won't want to ruin your design if a few records differ from many others. Then, in fact, one prefers to intervene in the final product.

But the advantage of merging data is that you only have to change a single template if you find that most of the design doesn't fit. The data merging can then be done again quite quickly.

[lastingMadness]

You all have offered a lot of useful insight, thank you. I will probably have to end up doing a combination of shrinking the whole field and applying some text wrap. Can't overstate your helpfulness here, friends. Thank you.

[sweethoss]

I know this is an older post, but Affinity, if a fit to text feature is possible (a button like the "all caps" button under character options, maybe?), it would be a HUGE time saver for me.  Right now, it's all done manually in post-processing.

[MikeTO]

32 minutes ago, sweethoss said:

I know this is an older post, but Affinity, if a fit to text feature is possible (a button like the "all caps" button under character options, maybe?), it would be a HUGE time saver for me.  Right now, it's all done manually in post-processing.

As the other posters pointed out, you wouldn't want the size of one name or whatever data is being imported to be smaller than the other names. If the data is all being formatted with a style, it should be easy to find any overflowing text with preflight and then just tweak the style for any offending frames. That would be very fast and ensure that all names are the exact same size.

[sweethoss]

The problem with that kind of answer is that assumes what I (or Kyle, or anyone else for that matter) would want.  It's perfectly allowable to have longer names be a different size than the others.  It's been part of these card design conventions for a decade, users are comfortable with it, and it doesn't ruin the aesthetic.  I know what I want and what my requirements are, and what the end-product should look like.  That's why I'm asking for this feature.  

Quote

If the data is all being formatted with a style, it should be easy to find any overflowing text with preflight

Regarding this, I'm a new user to Affinity, and what you're describing, while it doesn't solve the "fit text" issue, sounds like something I need investigate.  When you mention "style" I'm guessing you mean something similar to CSS where you create a style and apply it to a field, and then you change the style instead of changing each field manually. 

In the end, having a list of overflowing text would certainly be better than hunting for it myself.

[lastingMadness]

First of all, welcome to the Affinity family. We hope you like it here so far. As to your comment:    

   Overflowing text would be fine by me if it weren't for the limited space. In my case, I'm listing out qualifications for talent I'm trying to promote. I'm not familiar with the exact CSS code necessary, but I agree it would be useful. Manual Restyling would also work, but as our data sources get larger and larger, it could become unfeasible. I think a "fit data to textbox" option for textboxes in Affinity would be useful for data merges. Without a dev kit and/or an API though, we'll just have to hope Serif sees this. 

[sweethoss]

1 minute ago, Kyle Gunderson said:

First of all, welcome to the Affinity family. We hope you like it here so far. As to your comment:    

   Overflowing text would be fine by me if it weren't for the limited space. In my case, I'm listing out qualifications for talent I'm trying to promote. I'm not familiar with the exact CSS code necessary, but I agree it would be useful. Manual Restyling would also work, but as our data sources get larger and larger, it could become unfeasible. I think a "fit data to textbox" option for textboxes in Affinity would be useful for data merges. Without a dev kit and/or an API though, we'll just have to hope Serif sees this. 

100%, Kyle.  One person's need might not be the same as others, but I know a host of people who would benefit from this feature.  It could be optional, and thus the purists wouldn't have to use it if they don't want to.  For our use cases, it would be huge.  Perhaps more purists use APub than not and thus, it's not an important feature for Serif to add.  That much I can understand, but it doesn't stop me from trying since this would be a nice time saver for me

I came to APub from a piece of software called NanDeck that was great, but wasn't quite as polished a a little harder to work with, but it did have the fit feature.  I'm just trying to get as close to that kind of functionality that NanDeck offered while gaining the interface, speed, and power of everything else APub offers.

[Joem94]

I would aprreciate when I can use this feature of re-scaling the font size in data merge

[rodh]

The point here guys n gals is that auto-size text to frame exists in other programmes like InDesign and even in Publisher (yuk). It would really make the difference when creating variable entries on the same design, and who says we haven't considered the implications of reducing the text size? We have, and it is acceptable thanks. I think a lot of you are assuming that the smaller text would be on the same doc as the original size, and that would look odd, but what we would like is to be able to create documents with the same format but filled with a different text string (names) that fill the box proportionately.