Publisher Merge, Overflow, and Inexperience. Help?

[Veilheim]

Hi all.  I could really use some help.  I am trying to create a set of index cards (3x5") with one 'monster' per card in publisher using data merge.  I have cardstock I need to print this to that is 4 per page, but with some pretty specific measurements (no gutter, landscape, .5" margin left/right, 1.25" top/bottom).  Largely this works, but I'm getting killed with how to handle situations where the text overflows.  How do I set this up so when a card prints, the overflow gets printed on the back of the card, and in the correct position so that when I duplex print (flip short) it prints on the correct card on the back side??  The DJINNI entry below is a great example.  Help?  Thanks!

 

 

[Old Bruce]

I would try a two page spread setup (Starting on Left, not the default Right) so it starts with the bulk of the card's data on the Left page and then just have a linked Text Frame on the Right page.

To be honest I am not sure if this will work. Seems to, but there is some weird thing going on with the overflow text being masked, you have to turn that off in the layers panel.

Odd Test.zip

[thomaso]

28 minutes ago, Veilheim said:

How do I set this up so when a card prints, the overflow gets printed on the back of the card, and in the correct position so that when I duplex print (flip short) it prints on the correct card on the back side?

Do I understand right that you "actually" don't want a backside for every card?

Data Merge has no individual handling varying with the amount of text for each cell of the Data Merge Layout Tool. Thus you would have to setup it accordingly. If only single / a few cards are affected I'd do it manually after generating the merge, e.g. by adjusting font size or leading. Another option could be to use a two-column frame for those paragraphs as in Djinni or Doppelgänger, with the advantage that the space gets used more efficient by shorter empty lines.