#EASYCATALOG FOR ADOBE INDESIGN UPDATE#
#EASYCATALOG FOR ADOBE INDESIGN WINDOWS#

Whether you have a formatted database or a flat text or delimited file, you can create dynamic Adobe InDesign documents. InDesign interaction with databases can be simplified through the use of the Eas圜atalog plugin for InDesign. The power of the StoryParker plugin becomes evident when you can easily restore the elements you parked to their original positions. By allowing elements on every page to be parked out of the way, you can get them out of the way while you work on your layout. If you want to speed up the way you navigate through the InDesign interface, you might benefit from the Lightning Brain StoryParker for InDesign plugin available from the Rorohiko Web site.

#EASYCATALOG FOR ADOBE INDESIGN UPDATE#

The plugin will automatically update information from a text, RTF, PDF, or other placeable file so that the material in your layout is always up to date. To use the plugin, all you do is place the word “subscribe” in a text or image box that will contain the information you want to automatically update. With this plugin in place, images and text inserted into your layout will automatically update within the layout if it is changed outside of InDesign. By the way, you can import your data directly from Excel into an Eas圜atalog panel as well.The PlaceAutoSynchronizer plugin from Rorohiko adds the ability to place automatically updating text in InDesign layouts. It's really easy, and it's bi-directional - so you can update your document from the database at any time and - if you need to - your database from your document. With Eas圜atalog, you just import your data into a panel and place them from there into your document, from manually up to fully automatically. I personally would not recommend Jim Maivalds solution because a) Excel and Unicode are not friends b) working with Excel and XML really is a pain c) the process is relatively complicated d) you need a lot of specialized skills regarding XML, XSLT programming and so on e) it's not bi-directional f) when updating you'll do the whole process again. I'd need many more details of what went wrong with your specific catalog in order to be able to point your attention to a different solution that may better fit your needs.

In the meantime, I offer EC consulting and hands-on user training as well.

I've used Eas圜atalog very successfully for a number of years now, even for really large catalogs (35,000+ articles). Also, another product called In-Data also interfaces with InDesign, but I have no experience with that either. I have not used it personally but I know people who have. If the data is in MS Access Woodwing has a product that allows you to interface and import data for a catalog. The entire process is described in detail in the book A Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML. Image references have to be built properly before you export to XML or build an XSLT that will do it on the fly as you import the data in to your layout. If you move your data to InDesign you can save the time needed to build the XML spreadsheet. MS Access allows you to export directly to XML. Once the data is in the spreadsheet you can export to an XML file and import it into InDesign.Īs mentioned above you can map XML tags to Paragraph and character styles and create dynamic layout directly in InDesign or by using an XSLT to structure the data before you import it.

#EASYCATALOG FOR ADOBE INDESIGN WINDOWS#

What I do is either create a schema file (xsd) for the data that you want to use and import that into Excel on Windows (Mac version doesn't support XML) Once the schema is imported you can create an XML worksheet based on this schema and then copy and paste the data from the non-XML worksheet into the XML sheet. Don't save the file as an XML spreadsheet, that file is useless in InDesign. You can export the data from Windows Excel only to XML, but only when you create an XML-compatible worksheet.

InDesign works wonderfully with XML and XSLT.

Easycatalog for adobe indesign