How to Automatically Date Your Planner in Adobe InDesign (Using Data Merge)

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This is one of a few different ways to get automatic dates into your planner without having to do the heavy lifting of typing them one by one. I am going to do this in just one document, but in a later tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up an InDesign Book to make things much more manageable.

First things first, I am going to use Microsoft Excel. You’re welcome to do this in another spreadsheet program like Google Sheets. All you need is a way to create automatic dates and a file that exports as either a CSV or a TSV.

In Excel, our first row is going to be our heading. This does not need to be formatted in any particular way because InDesign will always take the first row as the heading and exclude it from the final file.

You can take this further and do more columns to create something more elaborate, but this tutorial is just the absolute basics.

Then, we’re going to type our date into the cell. I am using Excel Online which unfortunately won’t do some of the functions so my method of filling in the dates might look different to yours.

I’m going to type in the date, and then let Excel format it as a date for me.

Then, I can drag the corner of my box down to populate the column with dates. If you’re working on a different browser or the desktop version of Excel, you may be able to use SEQUENCE and Fill Down to populate the cells with dates.

This is a very American way of formatting your dates. If you want to change this, select all of your dates, and under the Home tab select the drop-down for Date and choose “More Number Formats…”

Under ‘Date’, you can change the format of it and the country. Changing the country to English (United Kingdom) will make the dates DAY/MONTH/YEAR. This can be a really easy way of generating planners for multiple audiences, but you can also scroll down the list and find the date written out if you prefer.

Now, my dates are written out in a way that suits me. With that, I am going to export this as an .XLSX file, because Excel Online doesn’t export to CSV.

To change this to a CSV, I am going to change the extension of the file. If you’re using dates that are formatted with a comma, you’re going to want to use a TSV instead. If this doesn’t work, you may need to open it in a program like Apple’s Numbers to export it as a CSV.

Now, InDesign gets fussy if there are empty lines in the source file, so I am going to open it up as a text document to make sure there aren’t any empty lines.

And there aren’t any, so we are all good to move into Adobe InDesign now.

I am just going to create a new document how I normally would do so, but feel free to choose any size and format you prefer.

Then, we’re going to open the Data Merge panel. To do this, we’re going to go “Window”, then “Utilities” and then “Data Merge”.

Then the Data Merge menu will open. On the right side of the panel you’re going to click the hamburger menu (three lines) and go “Select Data Source…”

You’ll select your data source, and if “Show Import Options” is selected, you’ll get a dialogue box.

Check that this is correct. Since my file is a CSV, I’m using a comma delimiter, and I’m leaving everything as default. Some files need different encoding, especially files that use characters like currency, but for our purposes, we’re just keeping everything as the default.

Once you’ve done that, your Data Merge panel is going to have the Date heading you put in earlier.

Let’s make a text box, and then if you click the “Date” in Data Merge it will fill the text box like this:

Now I’m going to format it using the Properties panel, which you can see it next to my pages panel. If you don’t have this on your screen go to “Window” in the top menu and find “Properties”.

If I tick the “Preview” button in the bottom of my Data Merge panel I can see how my first date will appear.

I’m pretty happy with that, so now I am going to create my merged document. This is going to create a separate document that is completely not linked to the original. This means that your original document with the data source stays intact for you to regenerate, but that any updates will not be reflected in previous merged documents.

Once I click that, I am going to get some options. For this, I only want one record (one date) per page, so I’ll keep these settings as default.

Once I click “OK”, my merged document will generate. There is now a date on every single page using the formatting that I specified.

Now you have automatic dates in your planner!

Making a big planner can be a massive undertaking with so many pages, so in a future tutorial I’ll be showing how to use InDesign Book files to combine multiple InDesign files. This will help keep your files neat and organised, as well as make them less overwhelming to create.