: Overlapping text with InDesign's data merge I'm trying to set up a book of song lyrics with a two-column layout. I'd like to pack as many songs as a page as will fit, so I tried doing a

@Jamie315

Wellp... You can still use Data merge, or at least part of it. The data merge functionality just will not output the text the way you want.

This method is similar to just placing a text document.

What you need to do:


Install the InlineMerge.jsxbin script


Install InlineMerge script by Loïc Aigon. Download link is at the bottom of that article.
I also put the script at the bottom of this answer.
In Indesign, open panel Window > Utilities > Scripts....
Expand folder named: User.
Right click the User folder and choose Reveal in finder.
In finder, open Scripts Panel folder and stick the script file there.
When you return to indesign, you should see the script in the Script panel, inside the User folder.

Set up the document:


First of all, setup the Indesign Data merge


Select the data source
or
Update data source

Edit your master page to have actual columns


Layout > Margins and columns...
This will help with the text flow later.

Make a text frame that fills one of the columns and fill it with your Data merge placeholders.
Give the Data merge placeholders appropriate Character styles or Paragraph styles
Save the current document, just in case...


The script works in relatively desructive way, as it makes all the changes to your current document. You can undo it, but it's worth it to save just in case. Especially if it crashes, or you just can't wait for it to finish.


Document should look something like this:





Run the script:

When you're ready to run the script, select the text frame and double click the script in the Scripts panel.

Note that the script may easily choke if you have more than, say... 500 lines of data. If you wait it out, it should pull through eventually.

You'll probably end up with something like this:



The text will obviously overflow your text frame, so click the red + on the bottom right and then Shift+click the column on the right.

Pressing shift will tell Indesign to make as many pages as is required to fit all the text.



Now from this moment on, you can use the Paragraph styles created earlier to style the text and tighten the text flow with the Keep options if necessary.



The script: inlineMerge.jsxbin
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