Many marketers in B2B sectors face this challenge: you have complex data in Excel format that you want to import into InDesign. The data gets updated every month, and so should your publications.
You’re not mastering InDesign, though, and you don’t have the budget to hire a desktop publisher to do the job…
Let us introduce Pintu Publish: a print automation engine that might become the solution to your (re)current headache 😉
Turning XML to InDesign
Pintu Publish turns an XML file into an InDesign lay-out. Extensible markup language (XML) is a common format for working with data.
All you need to achieve new levels of automation is:
- An InDesign template with tagged placeholders.
- An XML file containing your data and the necessary tags.
Formatting your XML file
So, how do you go from Excel to XML?
To convert Excel data into XML, you simply add markup information (tags) to your spreadsheet.
We won’t go into each step of the conversion in this article: from creating a markup schema through to exporting XML. Other websites have done a fantastic work at explaining how to convert Excel to XML. See for example this page on spreadsheeto.com.
You will find an extensive list of tag references to generate XML for Pintu Publish on our website.
Once you’ve exported (part of) your data to XML, you can test the result in the trial version of Pintu Publish. You can run extensive tests with our free trial software for 30 days. Enjoy!
Want to share your experience with XML conversion and parsing? Leave us a note!
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