Data Merge Question

[Michael_Seidman@adobeforums.com]

We've been using Pagemaker 7.0 for a "data merge" application.
The jobs has grown over what PM7 can handle.
We are making 10,000 pages that have 24 variable data elements per page.
the data comes from a CSV file.
In PM 7 this is taking hours (almost a day) to merge, before printing.
Very little graphics are involved.
Adobe suggest In Design, but they are not really sure. (They in fact, told me to ask the User forum.)

The question is:
Should we use In Design, or should we be looking outside of Adobe?
Anyone have a suggestion?

Thanks,

Mike Seidman

[Larry_Grohman@adobeforums.com]

InDesign's merge is pretty much the same as PM7. I think that large merge
projects as you describe will be problematic.

You might look at third party programs such as "Print Shop Mail" which does
the merge at print, rather then simply making a new document page for each
data record. There are others...


Larry

[Luke_Meehan@adobeforums.com]

You might be able to get away with MS Word, It can merge staright to the printer so you don't have to make a 10,000 page file. Ive done 6,000 double sided so 12,000 pages before in it with a full A4 page EPS Form in the backround with no troubles.

[Stu_Bloom@adobeforums.com]

I agree with Luke.

Unless you need the layout and typography capabilities of a DTP app, you'll be far better off with a word processor such as Word or WordPerfect.

[Michael_Seidman@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, I will do some experimenting with Word.
Mike Seidman