When performing a data merge in InDesign, is there a way to conditionally include a space between fields? Something like as follows:
<<Title>>[conditional space here]<<Name>>
Not all records have a <<Title>> and Remove blank lines for empty fields is checked.
Alternatively, you can use a GREP style to make this "conditional space" visible or not. Please note this workaround would work assuming your paragraph starts with "Title" or "Name", otherwise we shall think differently...
1- Insert a normal space between your fields:
<<Title>>[normal space]<<Name>>
2- Create a character style (let's call it "invisible"). Set Font size to minimum (0.1pt) and approach to -1000.
3- Open your paragraph style settings, go to GREP style and apply this "invisible" character style to a space at the beginning of the paragraph. Use Grep regex: ^\s. This way, if there is no "Title", you'll have [invisible space] + "Name".
Not out of the box. The data merge functionality in InDesign is quite limited – although good enough in most cases. An Xmpie plugin could do it, but that might be an expensive solution if the project isn't very big.
What may work is doing the data merge into a new ID file instead of exporting directly to PDF, and then do a find and replace on for instance on beginning whitespace.
