Dynamic Libraries and Document Templates

 

EasyCatalog Libraries

EasyCatalog brings dynamic content to InDesign's Libraries. By inserting 'Field Specifiers' - placeholders that show EasyCatalog where, and in what style, field content should be inserted - you can create a library of product styles that can be populated with data from any of the records in your EasyCatalog panel.

Designing a Product Style

Design a style for any of your products, or records, using the standard InDesign design tools - where field content should appear, however, simply use the EasyCatalog panel to insert a Field Specifier. Field Specifiers behave like normal text - therefore, you can add character styles, paragraph formatting, etc, all of which will be retained when populating the Field Specifier with 'real' data.

Product Styles can consist of one or more text and picture boxes - picture frames can also be tagged so that pictures will be imported when the style is dropped on the document.

Populating a Product Style

Product Styles can either be stored in a standard InDesign library, or grouped on the document.

Where the boxes are grouped together on the document, populate it simply by dragging the record from the EasyCatalog panel to one of the style's boxes.

For styles stored in an InDesign library, select the new 'EasyCatalog Library' option on the library panel pop-out menu. With this option checked, library items will be populated with the currently-selected product when dropped on the document.

When populated with live data, Field Specifiers become standard EasyCatalog fields - they can be updated and checked for errors in exactly the same way.