Merging large data sets

InDesign starts to slow down when documents get to be between 50 and 100 pages. Merging a lot of data can become impossibly slow once the document gets large. For this reason, we offer the ability to split a merge over multiple documents.

• DataLinker will start a new document after every set of records (you define how many)
• When the merge is finished it will create an InDesign book containing all the individual InDesign documents
• This makes merging lots of data much faster

When the merge is finished, you can use InDesign's native book features to create a single PDF combining all the individual InDesign documents into a single file.  Here's how.

To split a merge over multiple documents

1. Select the text that contains the fields you wish to merge
2. Select DataLinker > Merge
3. Choose what records to merge
4. In the Select rows for export dialog, check off the "Merge into multiple documents" checkbox
   
5. Choose how many records will be in each InDesign document
6. Click OK