Need Help :) How do i create variable footers in InDesign CS2??? 1

[TheAssassin]

Hi All,

Been looking for answers to my issue on the web and there is so much irrelevant stuff, but luckily i stumbled upon this forum and thought I'd sign up. So yes i am a newbie.

My question is HOW do i create footers with variable data in my In Design CS2 document.

I need them to appear in the document BEFORE print. Currently i have a whole list of differing footer quotes i need to add to the base of each page - these are listed in a spreadsheet. I am creating a small magazine and want the footers to appear near the page numbers - each page with a different footer quote.

I cannot work out the best way to do this using CS2 InDesign. Can any of you out there suggest a simple or the best way to do this?
I would prefer not to have to buy software so if there are any free options (such as scripts,, or ways to do it within the program), i would love to know.

Thanks so much for helping, i am on extremely tight deadlines and am fully stressing out because i don't know how i can do this. (I don't have time to do it manually and they may want to change all the footers etc). Its killing me!

THANKS AGAIN for all your help!!

 

[eugenetyson]

Unfortunately CS2 does not have any capability to produce changing header or footers.

What you can do though is save the spreadsheet as tab delimited (basically putting in tabs between the words that are in different cells).

Open your Document.

On the master page draw a text box near the number and where you want to position the text.

Go onto the first page and select the box, by unlocking it from the master page.

Place the tab delimited text into this box, it should come up with a red plus sign in the corner, that is fine.

Click that red plus sign and then click the next box on the next page, holding down alt, and then continue throughout the document.

All the text boxes will be linked. But you will notice that the text is still tabbed.

Do a find/change for

Find
^t

Change to
^p

Ensure that just Find in Story is selected.

Now you have to just place them on each page as you see fit.

It's not exactly manual. But even with CS3s variables you would still have a lot of work to do before you could assign the variables in the footers.


Does the text that you have in the spreadsheet appear in the actual physical text? Is it meant to show up on the same page in the footer?

 

[TheAssassin]

the text in the spreadsheet is a collection of quotes which dont appear on any of the other copy in the magazine.

it is a selection of quotes that i just wanted to appear next to the page number to make the bottom of the page more interesting (it is a magazine that allows for some creativity). so i just wanted the quotes to appear as footers.

they are not referencingabove text, and aren't footnotes that are linked to the page's main body copy.

ok i will try our suggestion, thanks for you help. does the above answer your question??

regards

 

[eugenetyson]

Yes it does. Because you can't work variables in InDesign CS3 without that text in your copy. So basically what you want here is just a quick way to place all the quotes on all the pages.

Basically what I said first should work pretty quick.