Publisher – Dynamic Data Merge Layout and Conditional Formatting in Tables

[Martyn T]

Hi

I’m wanting to build Year Book type document using Data Merge (I currently have all the data in an Excel spreadsheet).

Is it possible to have:

 

Conditional Formatting/Table Styles based on table contents

Each member of the Year Book is in a one of 5 Teams – I would like a cell fill to change colour based on which team the person is in.

 

Dynamic Data Merge Frame

Because of some member’s description are one line, some are a paragraph+ - in some cases 6-7 tables can fit on a page, in other cases only 1 or 2.

Is it possible to have Date Merge Frame dynamic so the maximum number of tables that can fit on a page is generated per page, rather than fixed number (based on the rows specified in the Data Merge frame) causing table rows to squish.

 

Hope this makes sense (and is possible)

 

Thanks

[Dan C]

Hi @Martyn T,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

11 hours ago, Martyn T said:

I would like a cell fill to change colour based on which team the person is in.

Unfortunately this isn't possible based on cell contents, you can create and manually assign text styles to selected text to apply specific formatting, or alternatively control the table settings, such as fill, in the Table Studio (View > Studio > Table) but there is no option to automate this currently, my apologies.

11 hours ago, Martyn T said:

Is it possible to have Date Merge Frame dynamic so the maximum number of tables that can fit on a page is generated per page, rather than fixed number (based on the rows specified in the Data Merge frame) causing table rows to squish.

As far as I'm aware, Data Merge will always create a table with a fixed number of rows based on your Data Merge options and is not 'page aware' at this time - however I can certainly understand how this would be beneficial, so I'm getting this logged as an improvement request with our developers now.

I hope this helps!

[Martyn T]

Thanks for the quick response @Dan C 

Shame to hear these features are not in Publisher yet - but good to hear that they are on your radar.

Page aware/content aware data merge would be amazing - fingers crossed Affinity HQ says yes 

Basic conditional formatting would be very powerful (some use cases - preparing a Company Accounts document, having the tables react dynamically based on the balance - a catalogue that used different font sizes based on the products size or formatting text to flag if a product has low stock or a minimum order limit) - Would it be possible to have it added to the Improvement list too? 

Thanks again

Martyn

[Dan C]

No problem at all!

9 minutes ago, Martyn T said:

Would it be possible to have it added to the Improvement list too? 

I can certainly request this with our developers, but I'm unable to provide any guarantees or timescales for when this may be implemented at this time

[Martyn T]

It's better being on a list somewhere (a page aware, dynamic list with conditional formatting to flag priorities  ) than not being on a list at all.

Thanks for your help

Martyn

[mike1024k]

You can change colors conditionally.  It's a bit of a kludge.

1) Use an picture frame as a background
2) Create png files of a fixed size, fill it with the colors you want to use (one per picture)
3) Set the picture frame to stretch image to size of the frame (doesn't matter, it's a fixed color)
4) In your spreadsheet, as the "color", list the image to use (red.png, orange.png, etc.)

Don't think you can do this for font colors (at least not easily), but background colors works fine.  You'll also get preflight warnings if the images have a different aspect ratio than the frames you're fitting them into.