Troubleshooting: How to fix "Remove Blank Lines for Empty Fields" in InDesign Data Merge

I'm working on a card design that has multiple variables within the same text field. Each variable is its own paragraph with its own Paragraph Style.

Original InDesign Document

It's rare that every card has content for each variable ABC though. Usually it's a mix, like AC, AB, or BC. The issue is that when you delete empty lines, sometimes the remaining paragraph gets re-assigned the deleted paragraph's style. Compound this over a whole document and you can see why it's a pain in the butt.


Here's a video explaining the situation:


Here's my solution:
To reliably remove blank lines from a merged document, first do NOT activate "Remove Blank Lines for Empty Fields" in your Content Placement Options. It's often too buggy to be reliable, except in the most simple cases where all of the paragraphs have the same style anyway.

Then Create Merged Document as you normally would. The resulting document will have a lot of blank lines because of the empty fields. Here's what you do about that:

In your merged document, run two Find/Replace searches.

First, you want to delete the strange white space characters introduced by Data Merge. You have to clear these out first since they get in the way of a traditional find/replace for empty paragraphs. In your Find/Change menu, make sure you are in the Text tab and run this search:
Find what: <FEFF>
Change To: Leave this completely empty since we want to delete these empty spaces.
Search: Document
Click "Change All"

Next, you can now delete empty lines. In your Find/Change menu, make sure you are in the GREP tab and run this search:
Find what: ^\s+
Change To: Leave this completely empty since we want to delete these empty spaces.
Search: Document
Click "Change All"

That should resolve any empty spaces you might have in your document.
---
BONUS:
If you happen to have an empty space at the end of your text field that hasn't been resolved by the first two steps, here is an optional third step:

In your Find/Change menu, make sure you are in the GREP tab and run this search:


Find what: \s+$
Change To: Leave this completely empty since we want to delete these empty spaces.
Search: Document
Click "Change All"

It's important you only do this search AFTER you've done the first two, but it should work like a charm.

Hope this helps!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has
Read more

One Thing to Avoid in Game Design

Image
When game designer Paul Peterson was interviewed for the upcoming Titans Series of games from Calliope Games, there was one segment at 1:55 that really caught my attention (emphasis mine): "A couple years ago I was teaching people how to play Guillotine and I hadn't played in a while. The first thing I did was say, 'The first thing you gonna do when you open your game is you look through this deck and you take this card.' I pulled out the Callous Guards card and threw it over my shoulder. Everybody laughed. I said, ' That's the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life.'" Oof. Those are strong words. What's the big deal? For context, the game Guillotine is all about collecting the heads of French nobles during the revolution. There is only one guillotine, with a line of nobles waiting for their grim fate. On your turn, you play action cards to change the order of the line, then take the Noble card from the front of the
Read more

Belle of the Ball Guest Name Generator

Image
Here's a fun little toy to tide you over while Belle of the Ball's is still in playtesting. Come up with your own name for a Belle of the Ball guest! Start with a first name from the first table. Then add a surname by combining a prefix and suffix from the second table. Bang! Now you're one classy Dental Untercaw or Chive Pimplesack!
Read more