InDesign and Data Merge

[oxburger]

I'm having a problem with data merge in InDesign where I have a name field that is filling out correctly on the first page, but then it's creating second and third pages with the name field filled in with data from another cell completely. The only thing I can figure out is that it's because the second field has a hard return in it. I know this probably isn't easy to understand, but I'll load some screen grabs. Has anyone else run into problems creating a data merge document where the .csv field had hard returns that were screwing everything up?

 

[Hopkins Printing]

Hey Kevin,

I have run into that very issue before and as you guessed, it was because of the hard returns. Do you have the original Excel file that you could clear out the hard returns?

Cheers,
Jon Morgan
Hopkins Printing

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Why not use soft returns? or you need to define that you use another delimiter (wich means you will forfeit the other delimiter character)

 

[oxburger]

Thanks for the replies. I'm the one who set up the form that gathers the data. I was thinking I was making it easier on myself by having one field the person could input a bunch of data as opposed to having several individual fields. But since it's only natural for them to hit return after every entry and that's what is screwing up my data merge, it's back to the drawing board. I'll just make the initial form contain as many fields as necessary to capture only one data set per field.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

You could do a replacement of return to soft return, or paragraph symbol in the csf, and then change it back in InDesign, after merge?

 

[oxburger]

I tried Jon's method and it worked great. Downloaded the excel file, did a find/replace, then saved as a CSV as opposed to my original method of downloading as a CSV.

 

[asfsdf]

Gremlins maybe?
Zap Gremlins in Problem Data Merge Files | InDesignSecrets

 

[RGBenderKC]

I was having this issue on W7 32bit. Never could find the reason, but later upgraded to 64bit (for other reasons) and problem solved!