Instant InDesign: Designing Templates for Fast and Efficient Page Layout

Data Merge Limitations

Data Merge is useful for creating highly structured documents, but it’s not well suited for complex layouts. For example, it doesn’t support the creation of facing page layouts. You also can’t build intelligence or rules into the process, so there isn’t much room for variation in a layout.

Another major feature that Data Merge lacks is the ability to flow multiple records into one long text frame (story), which is necessary in catalog production. Instead, each populated occurrence of a record is a stand-alone duplicate of the original placeholder elements. You can’t add new records, and when you delete a record, an empty hole is created. You are forced to create a new merged document each time the number of records changes. ...