Data merge, placeholder for text read from external fie

[mwenz]

If you have InDesign, then export the cards as a high-res TIF, an AI or EPS file, and reference the unique file names for the card in the merge file. Same with PagePlus if you have it, but use an image type instead of vector (though AI should work, I haven't used it in PP). Set up your page size for the card size. If you do not need to merge the card design, you can use Word or LibreOffice (LO is free).

Mike

[Michael]

Scribus to the rescue!
Scribus is an open source DTP program and can easily be compared with InDesign or Quark (where did Quark go?)

Download Scribus from www.scribus.net and tha generator script from http://www.ekkehardwill.de/sg/. With thme you can import ypur Xara exported document in Scribus and merge predefined data on that.

[Ampa]

Thanks for the input - I shall certainly take a look at some of these options, though it would be nice to have a way of doing this natively in Xara.

I notice that there is a Xara web-widget that will import a CSV file and display the contents as a table, plus there are already placeholders that will insert Flash files, or chunks of HTML, so it really seems that all the required tech is there built into the current version - it just needs a little remix to allow the extra flexibility that true Data Mergin would offer.