Data Merge on Master Pages

[MaxClass]

Desktop 27 inch iMac and long time user of Affinity Publisher, Photo, and Designer.

I find that “Data Merge” is one of my most used features as I do very specialized document sets for people all across America.

By accident, I found out by having a Master Page set up for some document where I needed to have certain information appear on every page of the documents depending upon the the physical location of the client based upon the Merge Data file for that client.

I was amazed to find out that Data Merge does not work when fields are entered into a Master Page. I can only imagine this is an oversight as no one had probably thought that would ever be needed, but, as it turns out it is and is something I need. Why exclude the Master Pages from merged data.

I’m sure you can make the replacement of data into Merge Fields available to Master Pages also.

Thank you in advance and looking forward to seeing this implemented.

[thomaso]

In my understanding the data merge process behaves like a master setup which generates children pages. But I appear to fail in a correct result if I setup a layout with two data source files, for instance a.) for text and b.) for images. Instead the generated result contains the data of a.) and b.) on separate pages.

Can you describe / illustrate a use case for data merge applied to an .afpub's master page?

[Old Bruce]

16 hours ago, MaxClass said:

I was amazed to find out that Data Merge does not work when fields are entered into a Master Page. I can only imagine this is an oversight as no one had probably thought that would ever be needed, but, as it turns out it is and is something I need. Why exclude the Master Pages from merged data.

I think the trick is to use either The Location field once on the master page as a standalone Art Text Field and then use the Data Merge Tool on the Page 1 for the rest of the information.

Another trick is to have the spread sheet contain the Location once, for the first record alone.

Proof of concept is included showing the Merge can be done on a Master page. Table can be on the Master Page or the Page 1.

Test.zip