EasyCatalog Support & Reference Guide

GETTING STARTED

Workflow design

Designing and optimising your automated publishing workflow requires some careful planning.Designing your automated catalog workflow

Sourcing & loading product data

EasyCatalog can import data from a CSV file, spreadsheet or XML file as well as linking to data held in a business database via ODBC.

Introducing the EasyCatalog panel

Loading or updating data in an EasyCatalog panel

Using XML data within EasyCatalog

Product management principles

Managing detailed product information for thousands of products (Coming soon)

What’s the difference between a product record and a product instance record?

Managing product images

(Coming soon)

EasyCatalog for teams

If your workflow includes multiple designers, graphic operators or contributors.

Using EasyCatalog in a network environment

USING EASYCATALOG

Creating automated pages

EasyCatalog can easily create grid and flow layouts based on your design preferences.

Creating automated content using ‘Paginate Into Text Flow’

Creating automated content using ‘Paginate At Positions Specified In The Data’

Creating content templates

EasyCatalog uses an enhanced version of an InDesign library file to hold pre-prepared layouts, including field specifiers for product and category data.

Creating and editing your EasyCatalog library

Controlling content using Pagination Rules

EasyCatalog includes powerful features to control your templated content.

Introduction to EasyCatalog Pagination Rules (Coming soon)

Creating tables using EasyCatalog

EasyCatalog allows you to create table-based catalogs quickly and easily.

Creating simple tables with EasyCatalog

Changing the maximum height of a table cell/row

Managing large documents

InDesign prefers book files for >20 pages. EasyCatalog has specific tools to integrate.

Creating and managing your catalog as an InDesign book file

Advanced data management

Tidying your data with EasyCatalog data cleansing

Using regular expressions (REGEX) with EasyCatalog data cleansing

Cross-referencing between multiple EasyCatalog panels (Coming soon)

REFERENCE

EasyCatalog Field Options

Data fields within the EasyCatalog Panel can be configured to control data types & formatting, picture options and advanced data cleansing.

EasyCatalog Custom Fields

EasyCatalog includes powerful functionality to allow you to organise, manipulate and extend your data.

Transform and supplement your data with EasyCatalog Custom Fields

EasyCatalog Computed Fields

Computed Fields are similar to Custom Fields, however the field transformation is applied directly to the EasyCatalog library item. Depending on your application, this can reduce the complexity and number of your Custom Fields.

Should I use a Custom Field or a Computed Field to transform my data?

Custom Field and Computed Field function reference

EasyCatalog Book Menu

EasyCatalog includes an additional menu available via InDesign’s book menu. Many common features can be applied to either the whole InDesign book, or to selected documents.

EasyCatalog book menu