Article:		Adobe's InDesign and XML
Subject:		Learning XML on the fly
Date:		2009-07-30 13:53:27
From:		third
Hi everyone, I'm fairly new to xml with regard to indesign and I've been reading a number of sources trying to wrap my head around it. I had a few questions and despite a rigorous search, I couldn't find the answers I desperately seeked. Anyway I hope someone could provide some insight. Situation: My studio is producing a direct mail promotional piece, and it needs to be personalized by with a database of names (let's say a minimum of 1000). I've figured out how to create a master and tag elements so that when the xml file is imported the tags are populated with the proper information. Here's my dilemma, from my understanding indesign does not create new pages based on the template for each recurring group of elements. So what I did was, create a multipage document using my template and threaded the text frames accordingly so that the information flows from one piece to the next. Now for a short run this would be fine, but this project demands a minimum run of 1000 unique pieces. Based on what I have done so far, that'll cause havoc creating a document that large. My creative director however, insists that there's a way to automate the printing of each unique piece (we're doing this in-house) from a single template without creating new pages and threading all the elements. I've done a lot of research and I have yet to find any evidence of such a workflow existing. Can anyone provide some clarification on this issue and what my best course of action would be to accomplish this project goals please? Thanks everyone!

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• Learning XML on the fly
  2009-08-31 13:12:28 marklightfoot [Reply]
  
  try using the data merge function instead... you'll find it very straight forward and its well documented in the InDesign help files.