Problem using Data Merge (Split)

[Krembler]

I've probably missed a setting but I'm having some difficulty with data merge in a project and I was looking to see if anyone had any suggestions as to where I'm going wrong.

The project is a card game where every 2 pages represents the front and back of a seperate playing card.

My difficulty is that the game has 2 seperate card backs. I have set up 2 master pages for the fronts and backs of the cards and my data source etc.

The "Fronts" master has various fields and images that are layered on top of each other to create a series of cards using different templates and text placement depending on source data and this works great.

The "Backs" master is just an image pointing at a field in the same data source which is a filepath to my cardback images.

I've set the "Fronts" to be applied to pages (every odd page) and the "Backs" to be every even page.

If have 2 actual pages (front and back) in the document the behaviour I'm seeing when I perform a merge is that the Fronts are applied to every page, then the backs seem to over-write every second page so that I get a document that seems to skip every second card.

If I have a single actual page (front) then I get simply the document generated with the card backs missing, even if I apply the backs master page to every even page.

This feels like something to do with the way data merge interacts with master pages and how many pages in the setup document.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @Krembler.

I'm not sure exactly how you have that setup, without some screenshots or (even better) a sample document to look at.

I'm also not sure that you can generate two pages from a single Data Merge source. You might need two sources.

[Krembler]

Hey, thanks for the welcome

So what I have is a spreadsheed with a cell that conactenates another cell's contents to a string to create a filename for the card backs: ie.

./templates/"+["cardback1"]+".afdesign"

Which is then a field that the 2nd page full image box (card back page) is pointed at.

so that should be able to exist in the same data source as the card fronts and be referred to in multiple pages surely?

This seems to work fine a I can cycle through the records checking that the correct card back image is being put into the frame in the master file.

The problem is that in the set up , each 2nd card front seems to be being removed and replaced with a card back (see example image).

Do you know of any way to have the merge take into account the assignation of alternating pages properly?

 

I would provide screenshots but I'm getting "-200 cant upload file" errors

[Old Bruce]

Don't think of Fronts and Backs. Think of the actual entire Card. All the information for that Card (the front and back) needs to be on one line in the spreadsheet. You'll have to do a lot of work with designing the spreadsheet.

[Krembler]

Hey, thanks for the suggestion, but each record already is on a single line in the spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet is actually pretty simple as far as the data ingestion goes.  You could think of the spreadsheet as a simple table like this:

card number | Card name | filepath to front template | filepath to back template

as all the fields for the front of the card are correct (and can be kind of thought of as a single column for all practical purposes) and the back of the card is simply one image box pointing at the correct column (and thus file route) in every record when previewed using the Data Merge control panel.

Unfortunately the fronts and backs of the card have to be on seperate pages as this is a requirement of our printing service.

I got the uploader to work so here is a diagram with screenshots showing the problem.

[Old Bruce]

51 minutes ago, Krembler said:

card number | Card name | filepath to front template | filepath to back template

That is only four fields, I would guess you are probably wanting to use more than just items of text and or graphics on the final cards.

Here is a guess about how many columns you would want for use as separate fields in the Spreadsheet;

Some are pics and some are text. You do not want to have just a Picture Frame in the Data Merge Layout. Seeing as this is only going to use one "cell" of the Data Merge Layout, you don't need it at all. You can just place the appropriate fields on Page 1 of the "Master Layout" and not have them inside the Picture Frame which I think you have done, there is a disclosure triangle there.

[Krembler]

Hey, thank you so much! You were absolutely right!

All I needed to do was remove the data layout layer and everything worked perfectly!

Looks like the data merge layer was reading records weirdly.

Getting this to work has taken our game one step further towards being completely off SAAS products