Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To and today I'm going to show you how to add variable
images and text with Adobe InDesign Data Merge. Alright, let's get started.
Okay, so first I want to show you the end result so you'll know if this tutorial is right for you.
Basically, you'll have a folder with a lot of different photos in it that you want to put into
a document. And you want InDesign to pull the pictures and text from a spreadsheet like this,
that lists the photo locations, the title of the photo, and then the photographer name or something
similar. And then this will become something like this, where each photo is here pulled from the
spreadsheet, and then the title of the photo is below it with the photographer below that.
So if that's the type of thing you want to do, this tutorial will show you how to do it.
So first, you'll have to set a few things up before getting started with InDesign.
You'll need a folder with all the images that you want to include. And the photos that I'm using
in this tutorial I just got from Google image search - those are the ones that popped up. And
they are not my photos, or any ones that I know. They're just for this tutorial. Now I'm in Google
Sheets. And if you're not familiar with Google Sheets, it's basically a free online spreadsheet
that you can get by having a Gmail account. You can also do this with Excel, but I've heard of
people having trouble getting a CSV saved from Excel to work in InDesign. So if you're having
trouble with your Excel file, you can just copy that information into Google Sheets, and then
save it from a CSV file from here. The first row in your spreadsheet is important. So if I click on
cell A1, I have an apostrophe and then an @ symbol and then the word 'image' with no spaces,
So '@image. That will tip off InDesign that everything under this is going to be
an image file. The next row over I've got my next category, which is called 'image title.' And I
can title this anything I want. And then the next one is photographer. So row number one, you don't
do anything to format it. But InDesign knows that row number one will not actually be put into the
InDesign document. And it's just sort of category titles here. Now the way to format your images,
first, you'll want a slash. And this is the same key as your question mark, in case you're having
trouble finding it on your keyboard. Then you want the folder name. So as you can see, my folder name
is Photos here. So that's where photos is coming from. Then another slash and then the image title.
So this download1.JPG is right here, download1.JPG. All of these are the exact names of
the photos inside that folder for image title, you can have any title that you want for your images,
I just decided to make it the same as the photo name. And then for the photographer, these are
all fake names that I made up. So whatever the photographer's names are, you can put them here.
Now when you save your InDesign file, you'll want to save it right out here like I did.
Here's the sample that I was using. So when it's going to look for those photos,
the slash means it's going to search this same location that the document is in,
and then it will see photos, and then it'll see the names of the photos. So if you move this
InDesign document out of here, it's not going to know where this photos folder is. You kind of need
to keep these two things together. I only have three columns, but you can add as many as you need
for whatever variable data you have. And once you're done formatting your spreadsheet,
you'll want to save this as a CSV file. So we'll go to File, Download, and then Comma Separated
Values, which is the CSV. So we'll save that and it'll come right down into my Downloads. In Excel,
this is going to be something like File > Save as CSV or something like that. It might even be
Export As. So I've got my Photo Sheet 1 down here in Downloads. And I'm just going to click and pull
this up here into my other folder, along with my InDesign document and my photos. I already
had one in there, but I'm going to overwrite it. Okay, so now we've got all the things we need.
We've got our photos here, we've got our CSV file, and now we can go to InDesign and create
a new document. So I'll click on it, and I'll Create New, I'm going to come up here to Print
and then choose Letter. I also don't want facing pages, so I'm going to uncheck that. I only want
one page here. Everything's in pikas - I'm going to go ahead and change it to inches,
just so you can see it's an 8 1/2 by 11. We've got one page and we want start to be #1
also and I'm going to leave these things alone. So we'll say Create. Okay, next, I'm going to
get my Pages up. Now if you don't see this, you're going to come up here to Window > Pages. And all
the other windows that I have open here will be located under Window too. And you'll notice that
your first page is blue. This is your regular page. But we don't really want this right now,
we want to go to the A master. So double click on the A master to get into master pages mode.
Now first, I'm going to add a rectangle frame for our photo. So I'll click rectangle frame,
and then I'm just going to click and drag. I'm only going to make one image box and two text
boxes, one for each column in the spreadsheet. And I'm going to let InDesign figure out how many will
fit on a page. Okay, so I've got my frame here for the photo. Now I'm going to click on my text box,
and just draw a text box underneath this will be for the title or the name of the photo. And then
I'm going to grab another text box and put it underneath that. And this one will be for the
photographer, which is column 3. We'll move this line up a little bit. And now double click on
page one to get back out of that mode. When we do that, we won't be able to select anything on here,
because it's coming from the master page. But we need to be able to select it to kind of tell
InDesign what column to pull from the spreadsheet. So to do that, hold SHIFT and CMD on a Mac
and double click the first box. On a PC that SHIFT and CTRL and double click. Now we need to access
the data on our spreadsheet. So to do that, I'll go to Window > Utilities and Data Merge. We've
got some instructions here, but I'm just going to walk you through the process. I'll click on
this little three lines fly out here, and choose Select Data Source. And now I'm back here in my
folder with all my information. And I can see the CSV file right up here at the top.
I'll click it and choose Open. And now we can see the three columns are listed here. And this
is coming from row one of the spreadsheet. So for this box that we just double clicked,
I'm going to click on the image. You can see this put a dotted line outside of it and then given us
a variable data image indication. Now let's get back on our master page by double clicking there.
And I'm going to go ahead and add text in here. I'm going to type title of the image here. I'm
going to come to my Character palette and just make this text a little bit bigger. And I'll come
to the paragraph to center it. Now I'll click on the second text box and type 'photographer.'
And I'll highlight that by hitting CMD A or CTRL A on my keyboard (that's Select All). And then
I'm going to get my Eyedropper and just click on this text. So this has made it centered and
also the same text as the other piece. We could also change our font here
and all that but since this is just a tutorial, I'm going to leave it alone.
So we're still up here in A master. And now we need to go back to our page. Now I'll hold
SHIFT and CMD or SHIFT and CTRL on a PC and double click the title of the image text box,
which will put my cursor in it, and then I'll select all with CMD A or CTRL A and click image
title in Data Merge. And it'll change it to indicate that this is pulling from the
spreadsheet. I'll get back on my Selection tool and do the same thing with this one.
Now we have data from all three columns in our InDesign document.
So now I'm going to come down here on the Data Merge window and choose Preview.
And now we can see we've got the title of this one, we've got the photographer, and we've got
the image itself up here. We can even come over here and kind of scroll through all the different
images and their information. Okay, so the next step is to come up here and click this little
button, which is Create Merged Document. I'll click that. And that'll bring up this dialog box.
So first, we'll look at the records to merge, we want to make sure this is on All records. And then
for the records per document, we want Multiple records so that it puts them all on one page.
And we can preview that right here. Okay, and you can see that there's not space between these right
now, we're also not able to fit a third row down here. So let's go into Multiple Record Layout.
I want to increase the space between the columns just to give them a little bit of breathing room.
So I'm going to highlight that area and then use my arrow keys to just space them out a little bit.
I'm also going to come up here to Options and to Fill Frames Proportionally
so that the top and bottom of this will be filled with the image. And what this will do,
it'll actually cut off the sides which is fine for this because I really want it to be kind of like a
thumbnail view of what the image is. So I'll choose Fill Frames Proportionally.
Okay, and that's looking really nice. Now to get another row on here, we're going to have to adjust
how this is laid out, so I'm going to cancel. And then I'm going to click on my text box here,
and just shorten it up a little bit. And I'll move this one up so that's closer. Now when we
go ahead and merge and choose multiple records in preview, we're able to fit all nine on one
page. And now we can go in and add our spacing, and all of that, I'm going to add a little more
between the rows too. OK, and this looks perfect, I'll need to go back into options and choose Fill
Frame Proportionally. And then we'll say OK. We'll get this dialog box. This means that
none of the text is long enough to go outside the text frames. So that's a good thing. But if there
were text that flowed outside the frame, it would tell us where to find that. So we could just make
that text a little bit smaller. So we'll say OK, and now we can see our pages have generated all
of the images in the spreadsheet. And let's see how this looks without guides. So I'm just going
to hit W on my keyboard, and it's looking pretty nice. Now InDesign has made a new document for us.
So I'll want to save this one as something like merged document.
Now I have the InDesign file. And I think I'll also export this as a PDF.
So I'll come to File > Export. And then we'll choose Adobe PDF, and I'll call it Merged Doc
also. We'll save that. High quality print is a good one, and we'll export and here's the PDF.
So if your layout is not looking too great, just cancel and make adjustments in the master page
or in the regular page, and then retry the Data Merge.
All right. If you liked this video, please click on the Like button.
And I'll see you in a couple days with another graphic design video. Thank you!!!