Affinity Publisher - Merge Data Question

[locomoco]

I have created a document in Affinity publisher (2 master pages - one is the text box where I'd like the quote to be - and the 2nd master page is the pictures. My document is complete with all pages. I've now prepared an Excel spreadsheet of quotes. 

I want to add a quote on every second page (importing my Excel spreadsheet) and not have to do each one manually. I cannot figure out how to do it properly with data merge.  Can this be done? If so, I'll need details, as this is still new for me.

Thanks, in advance.

 

 

[lacerto]

5 hours ago, locomoco said:

I want to add a quote on every second page (importing my Excel spreadsheet) and not have to do each one manually. I cannot figure out how to do it properly with data merge.  Can this be done? If so, I'll need details, as this is still new for me.

If you already have a catalogue with images laid out, and you just want to fetch text on every second page from an Excel sheet, you can place a data merge layout control containing a text frame on the master page where you need to have the quote, and then perform merge.

a) Master page in a document where each spread will have images on the left (already laid out manually), and the data is wanted to be fetched from an external data source. The field that will receive data from the data source needs to be placed within a Data Merge Layout control as shown below:

b) This is how the merge setup will look on regular pages. Manually laid out images on the left side of each spread, and the quote on the right side defined above on the master page, showing the preview text from record 1 on each spread.

  

c) Date merge performed, showing the actual quote from the Excel sheet:

Data merge can well be used to fetch both the images and the quote at the same time, but this would not allow custom layout similarly as shown above. In situations data from the same record is fetched on multiple pages, multiple Data Merge Layout controls need to be used and then set the record advance to zero (instead of the default 1) for all Data Merge Layout controls except the last one, which then advances the record pointer for the next record. Multipage layout can be set both for designs where information for the same record is fetched on a spread (or multiple spreads), and for designs where information for the same record is fetched on two sides of a page (or multiple pages).