Data merge, About data merge – Adobe InDesign CS3 User Manual
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INDESIGN CS3
User Guide
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To disable or enable a plug-in, make sure that a custom set is active, and then click to hide or show the check mark
at the far left of the plug-in listing.
Note: When you enable or disable plug-ins or choose a different plug-in set, the change doesn’t take effect until you exit
and restart InDesign.
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To change the plug-ins list display, select or deselect any option in the Display section. Changing options in this
section affects the list display only, not the actual status of plug-ins.
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To create a new plug-in set from a duplicate of the active set, click Duplicate, name the set, and then click OK. The
set you create becomes the active set.
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To rename the active set of plug-ins, click Rename, name the set, and then click OK.
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To permanently remove the active set, click Delete, and then click OK when an alert message appears.
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To import a file of plug-in sets, click Import, locate and select the file containing the sets you want to import, and
then click OK. If the file you import contains a set that has the same name as an existing set, the imported set will
be renamed as a copy. The first set in the file you import becomes the active set.
Note: (Windows only) When importing plug-in sets, if you select Plug-in Manager Import Files in the Files Of Type menu
in the Open A File dialog box, plug-in set files will appear only if the files are named with a file name extension .pset.
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To export all custom plug-in sets to one file, click Export, go to the folder in which you want to store the file, select
Export All Sets, and then click Save. Plug-in sets are exported with the file name extension .pset.
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To see detailed information about a plug-in, select the plug-in and click Show Info. In addition to viewing such
information as a plug-in’s version, you can find out if it depends on other plug-ins. When you’re finished, click OK
to close the Plug-in Information dialog box.
You can also view plug-in details by double-clicking a plug-in in the list.
Data merge
About data merge
To create form letters, envelopes, or mailing labels, you merge a data source file with a target document.
The data source file contains the information that varies in each iteration of the target document, such as the names
and addresses of the recipients of a form letter. A data source file is made up of fields and records.Fields are groups of
specific information, such as company names or postal codes, whereas records are rows of complete sets of infor-
mation, such as a company’s name, street address, city, state, and postal code. A data source file can be a comma-
delimited file (.csv) or a tab-delimited (.txt) file in which each piece of data is separated by a comma or a tab, respec-
tively.
The target document is an InDesign document that contains the data-field placeholders, plus all the boilerplate
material, text, and other items that remain the same in each iteration of the merged document.
The merged document is the resulting InDesign document that contains the boilerplate information from the target
document, repeated as many times as it takes to accommodate each record from the data source.