How to Data Merge Adobe InDesign CC with Barcodes, Images & Text

Let’s see how to easily make  visiting card with different variant names, registration number, photo and barcode etc..

Open Microsoft Excel Sheet that contain the information of all students and their Name, Registration number Division etc. Check the screen-short that I made a demo of excel data sheet.

kindly check Sample sheet titled as titles Give as Serial number, Name of the students, Register Number, Class of Study, Barcode, photo. (When entering the path of a photo or image,  must give began the title ‘@ symbol. Excel will show error if given only @. Put an apostrophe to avoid it.)

Then enter the required information

Now lets  set barcode for create data merge adobe indesign with help of excel spread sheet, download VB Marco extension from  idautomation website and download the barcode VB extension. Click here to download barcode tool.  Extract the downloaded zip folder and Install idAutomation font. it is included zip folder which we downloaded just now.

again go to excel sheet for creating data merge indesign. Compile  VB Extension to Microsoft Excel sheet. first click on the Developer tab from the menu. and press on Visual Basic button.

If you do not see the Developer tab on your excel, go to File> Option and activate the Developer tab.

From Visual Basic window, go to File > Import. just import the VB extension we downloaded and  close Visual Basic window

Now go to excel barcode column and enter =code128(column name).

In the photo column, type the path of the photo, Name and image type. if you could make the photo name as register number or a unique number, it will easier to use. I saved photos in a folder named Photo inside the folder where I saved the excel sheet. refer the screenshort for example

Now we have to save Excel sheet as CSV format. Then close Excel.

Now let’s open Adobe InDesign to data merge in indesign. Open a new page in Indesign and place the layout of the pre-prepared ID card layout on it. Set the required information type area and image place.

Now go to Utility in the window and select data Merge indesign from window panel.

Now from the data Merge indesign popup window

click on option icon and click data source option, go to the path of the Excel sheet that we have saved and select it.
Now you can see all the excel column headings in data merge indesign window. From this, select the desired heading to text area.

Be sure to select the barcode font IDAutomation itself.

Now click on the data Merge button

From the dialog box that appears, Set the required items and press the OK button.

Now we can see the ID card of all the students on each page.

This has save us a lot of time.

Still If you need any clarifications, just leave your comments in comment box below.