You’ve got the basics of the pimsimple InDesign client working. Pages are being produced, but then someone says “Can you update the prices?” or “Can you change the data on the page? I’ve made a few changes to the attributes” and you’re left wondering which is quicker, re-exporting the pages, or disposing of the body of the questioner.
Fear not! There is a way of updating or refreshing the data on the page AFTER you’ve exported it… BUT you have to change the way you work slightly and it only works for individual text frames.
In the same way, as you tag graphic boxes with a Script Label, you can also tag text frames in exactly the same way. The problem is that it replaces the entire contents of the frame with the attribute. So you need to think of a few clever ways of working…
To avoid text frames overlapping you could have anchored text frames which move with other text, this will stop frames crashing into one another. Similarly, you can set the “Text Frame Options” of your frame to “Auto Size” so it grows with the text. Using tricks like this you can have a separate text frame for each attribute and maintain a great looking page.
Refreshing or updating the page works just like an export. You click the InDesign icon in the client application, choose which attributes you want to export (or update), choose a page (if there’s more than one) and BINGO!… your data is updated, prices are refreshed, mistakes corrected and you can stop thinking about killing Colin from Product Management, at least for a short while.
