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I'm laying out 100+ business listings into a three-column document.

The listings are currently in a .csv spreadsheet that looks like so:

A | B | C | D

Company name | Location | Blurb | Contact Info

ABC Ltd. | Bristol | Great company, cheap prices. | 0117 9876543

DEF Inc. | London | Great prices, cheap company. | 020 234 5667

GHI GmbH. | Berlin | Grosse Firma, gunstige Preise. | 30 12345 678

I'd like to import, and if possible sync, the spreadsheet into my 4-column layout like so, with applied character formatting (font size, colour etc.) for each imported column:

ABC Ltd.
Bristol
Great company, cheap prices.
0117 9876543

DEF Inc.
London
Great prices, cheap company.
020 234 5667

GHI GmbH.
Berlin
Grosse Firma, gunstige Preise.
30 12345 678

Can anyone suggest how I might do this, if it is in fact possible? All the info I can find suggests that I can only import a sheet as a table, which doesn't suit my requirements.

I'd prefer a solution that can be achieved in InDesign, rather than formatting in the spreadsheet or other programs first, though if that's the only way of doing things that works for me!

If any clarification's needed let me know, I really appreciate any help or pointers anyone can give me on this.

Thank you!

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It is possible - but you need some experience in indesigns datamerge and an additional script from Loic called inline merge. With datamerge you can import the content of your csv to indesign. In datamerge options you can set multiple records per page so you can import like 16 records per page. Including Our styling. What datamerge cannot handle is the flowing of content inside one text frame Therfore you meed the above mentioned script.

edit: for indesign datamerge your csv has to be comma separated and utf 16 encoded

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    +1 for Loic Aigon Inline merge script if you want to get all merged text into a single text frame. Please note you'll lose the sync abilities, meaning you'll have to re-run the script if spreadsheet is updated. Also, I suggest you use a tab separated .txt file instead of comma separated CSV in order to avoid issues with your commas (we can see there are commas in your text)
    – Vinny
    Jan 8, 2018 at 8:48
  • Thanks both, I'll give this method a go and mark off as completed if it works out.
    – dvprry
    Jan 8, 2018 at 17:10
  • Just used this method, apart from a bit of format tidying up to sort out paragraph breaks getting incorrectly interpreted as a field change, this worked out well, thank you! Also I used tsv and it worked just fine, just had to allow the import of all files rather than what it decided were compatible.
    – dvprry
    Feb 2, 2018 at 11:49
  • glad it worked out for you
    – Pat_Morita
    Feb 2, 2018 at 11:52

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