Hi everyone, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to tell you how
to create envelope labels with Adobe InDesign Data Merge.
All right, let's get started.
Okay, so a Data Merge in InDesign generally consists of three different documents.
First, you have the data source file.
That's going to look something like this.
You will also have a target document, which in the end will look something like
this.
And then you'll have a final merged document, which will look something like this.
Now first, let's tackle the data source file.
Now this is set up in either Excel or just a spreadsheet document like Google Sheets.
Since I don't have Excel on this computer, I'm using Google Sheets but it works exactly
the same way in Excel.
So all I've done here is in the first row, nothing is special about this - I just typed
the word 'title'.
Then I typed 'first name, last name, street address,' etc.
The way InDesign works is it knows to pull from that first row.
So as long as your category names are in your first row, you'll be good to go.
And then just go ahead and fill out all of this information.
Now when you export your file, you cannot have any other information in the file.
So we'll need to get rid of all of this information out here.
I'll just highlight it and hit Delete.
And there's a little extra over here, delete that.
Okay, so all we have is what's in these first five columns.
So now we'll go to File > Download > Comma separated values.
Now in Excel, this is probably going to be something like File > Save as > CSV or File
> Export as > CSV.
But in Google Sheets, it's down here under Download.
So we'll do this.
And it's saved down here in my downloads, and I'm just going to overwrite this one...
we'll replace it.
Okay, so that takes care of our data source file.
Now the envelope label I'm using is an Avery 8160.
And I want to look for a template.
So I'm just going to put 'Avery 8160 template' into Google and see what comes up.
Okay, and here the first result is the Avery website.
And they actually give us how big the address labels are, which we will need to know that
for later and it says how many per sheet, and then you can actually download an InDesign
file.
You do have to put your email address in and stuff like that, but let's go ahead and download
it.
And I'm going to open this document.
Okay, I really recommend not using the document that you just downloaded.
The only reason I'm using it now is to find out my margins and to see the space in between
the labels.
I actually started out using this InDesign template and I could not get the mail merge
to work.
So I recommend starting with a brand new document and not using this template.
Let's zoom in a little bit here.
We already know from the website that each label is 1" x 2 5/8".
So let's go ahead and start a new document with CMD N.
We're going to come over here to Print.
And since we're in the US, we use letter and that's what size this template is also.
Make sure to turn off Facing Pages, and then we'll create the document.
And now I'm going to hit 't' and I'm just going to draw a box and then I'll get my selection
tool.
Right now we're in points but I need it to be in inches.
So I'll control or right-click the ruler and change it to inches.
And I have to do the same over here.
And now we've got 2.875.
I actually want that to be 2 5/8".
So I'm going to do 5/8 and then I'm just going to add 2 to the front.
So it's 2.625.
And then the height is 1".
So this is the size of our label.
So we've got that in there, and that's great.
But now we need to figure out the margin.
So let's go back to our Avery 8160.
And I'm going to draw a little box right over here.
And it looks like our margin on the right and left is .19.
So I'm going to copy that.
I'll come back to our new document, and I'm going to hit OPTION CMD P, or CTRL, ALT P
on a PC.
We're going to undo this little link and then change the left and the right to .19".
We'll say okay.
And as you can see, it kind of matches the other one now.
So let's grab our little box with the selection tool and do the same thing to find out that
top margin.
Okay, so it's 0.5."
I'll highlight that and copy it, we'll come to our new document, hit OPTION CMD P, or
CTRL, ALT P on a PC to get our document setup.
And then it looks like our top and bottom are already 0.5."
So that is great.
We'll say OK.
I'm going to zoom in here.
And with my v tool, the selection tool, I'm just going to pull this exactly up into that
margin, it should kind of snap into place over there.
And now let's hit CMD B, or CTRL B on a PC to get our Text Frame Options.
We don't want our text to go right up to the edge of the label, so we want our inset spacing
to be maybe about .1875.
We can change this later.
Make sure this little link is linked.
So we'll say ok.
Alright, so now let's start the merge process.
Go to Window, utilities and Data Merge.
And that'll bring up this little window.
It actually gives us some instructions, which is nice, but I'll just walk you through the
process.
So we'll go up here to the flyout and choose Select Data Source.
And wherever you saved that CSV file from your Excel document or Google Sheet, find
that and then just click and open.
And you might get this text box but probably won't – this comes from having Import Options
checked when you're doing that last step.
Okay, we'll say OK.
And now you can see it's brought in all of those categories from the top row of the Excel
document.
We've got title, first name, last name, street address, and city.
So I'm just going to hit 't' on my keyboard to get my text tool.
I'll just click in here, and I'm going to click Title.
I didn't add any spaces after things, so I'm just going to add them here in my document,
so I'm going to hit the spacebar.
Then we'll add the first name, space, last name.
And then I want a hard return.
So this is going to say like Mr. Ben Smith, so I want a hard return after this line.
Then I'll add my street address, then another hard return, and then the city (which the
city actually includes the city, state and zip code).
Okay, so now I'm going to select all of these and I think the font, the font is pretty big.
So I'm going to knock that down to 10.
I'm going to choose a different font here.
We'll choose Arial regular.
And that's all you need to do for setting up the target document!
Now we need to merge these and to do that it's this little button right here, Create
Merged Document.
And then we get another window that comes up.
Okay, so we want all records in the document for the 'Records per document' page.
We don't want just this one.
We want a lot of records - we want all of them we can fit.
InDesign will put as many as possible on one page, so you can't tell it like '3 columns,
10 rows.'
It doesn't work that way.
It just puts as many as it knows will fit on there.
So anyway, we'll choose Multiple Records.
And this is just a little graphic that shows what it should do.
These two things are fine to leave checked.
And then we'll go to multiple record layout.
Your margins should match the margins you put in on the document.
So these are correct.
And then you can arrange by either rows first, if you want to do it that way, or columns
first.
I usually do rows first, but it's whatever you want.
For the spacing I've actually measured, and the spacing between the columns is .12", and
then there is no space between the row...and I'll show you that.
I'll just say OK, and you can see it created the document just the way it was supposed
to.
But I want to show you that template that we had.
You can see this space in between here.
When I draw a little box, it comes up to .12.
I already measured that ahead of time, but you know, you'll want to get the amount of
space between your columns and then here is zero.
Okay, let's go back to our merged document.
You can see, you might want to change some things about the inset text.
So if we wanted to kind of center this more, we're going to want to make that inset text
margin on the left a little bit bigger, and maybe on the top, so we could just go back
into our target document, click command B,
and click this link and then increase the left margin a little bit and possibly the
top margin.
Maybe not quite that much.
And we'll say OK, and then you can just run it again.
This all looks good, we'll say OK, so now it's creating that third document,
which is the merged document.
And this one looks much better.
Everything looks pretty centered.
Now it's funny, I have exactly 30 records, and
so it stops right here at 30.
But if you have 35 it's going to create a new page automatically for you.
Now, I've noticed that this process, for me anyway, has been pretty glitchy – one little
thing wrong and it'll sort of make it fail.
So if you're having any issues, just leave those in the comments section below.
Alright, that's my video for this week.
If you're interested in longer courses, I have a few out on Skillshare so you can check
those out.
I'll leave a link in the description below.
Thank you!!!