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Create Numbered Tickets the Easy Way in InDesign

on Apr 13th 2009 with 53 comments
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In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to do an easy setup in InDesign for automatically numbered tickets. We will look at the handy “Data Merge Tool,” which is a great time-saver. Let’s jump into this quick tutorial!

Final Image Preview

Below is the final image we will be working towards. Want access to the full Vector Source files and downloadable copies of every tutorial, including this one? Join Vector Plus for just 9$ a month.

Step 1

Open a new document in InDesign and deselect Facing Pages, choose letter size and vertical orientation. then OK.

Step 2

Open the Margin and Columns Palette (Layout > Margin and Columns) and set the margins all around to 12 pt (1 pica).

Step 3

Drag a horizontal and vertical guide onto the page. Set them both to 1p6 (18pt). To align them select the guide with the selection Tool (V) and type the number into the X and Y tab. This will ensure that the guides are set to the exact number.

Step 4

Repeat Step 3 and set the other guide the same way.

Step 5

I already created a background image (in EPS format, which is available to Vector Plus members in the download). Select the Rectangle Frame Tool (F) from the tools palette and drag a rectangle onto the page. Then click Command + D and locate the image (in this case an image that you chose to use as a background for the tickets).

The background image has a size of 22p5 by 5p6. You can choose any size as long as it fits onto your page. To fit the Rectangle Frame to the background image, select the Option + Command + C. This fits the frame to the content.

Step 6

Create several layers in the Layers Palette. We will need one for the background (“bg”), one for text (“text”) and one for the numbers (“numbers”). Lock the background layer.

Step 7

A very important step is to make sure we are working in the Master Page. Double-Click the A-Master icon in the Pages Palette. This will make the master page active.

Step 8

Start adding some text. Date, time, place, event, etc. Be creative. You can place color boxes behind the text and play with the font sizes. I usually never use more the two fonts, and if I do, I’ll make sure that they are quite the opposite. Pick a font with a big family, meaning lots of weights. Helvetica, DIN or Univers are good choices.

Step 9

We also want to setup right away the crop marks for the tickets. Create another layer and call it “crop marks & score marks.” We will place the crop marks and the score line onto this layer. Start placing crop marks that you create with the Pen Tool (P) around the ticket.

Step 10

We also want to place a score mark where the ticket in theory will be perforated and torn. Create a dotted line with the Pen Tool (P) and place it where you want your ticket to be scored.

Step 11

Now let the fun begin. Go to Window > Automation > Data Merge and select the text file 100.txt. (You can download this data file with numbers 0-100 here).

Step 12

Select the Text Tool (T) and start dragging a text box that will wrap around the whole ticket including the crop marks. This is very important since the Data Merge will automatically calculate the duplication. Then open up the Text Frame Option (Command + B) and set the Inset spacing to 1p4 for the top and 1p8 for the left. Of course, you can place the text for the numbers anywhere you like. I set the numbers to a small text.

Step 13

Start writing the text for the numbers. In this case, I typed ticket “nr.” Leave any numbers out. This will be filled in by the data file. As you can see, the text box wraps around the full tickets with crop marks.

Step 14

Zoom into the tickets where you have placed the text for the numbering and click on the data merge palette. This should be open already since we already called in the data file in Step 11. Place the text cursor behind the last letter of your text. Then click on the text data file (100.txt) in the Data Merge Palette.

Step 15

This is what you should see now. Brackets with 000. Make sure you are still on the Master Page.

Step 16

This is what you should have right now. We are still in the master page.

Step 17

Go back to the Data Merge Palette. On the bottom-right of the Data Merge Palette is a small icon called Create Merged Document. Click this icons once.

Step 18

You will now have a pop-up window called Create Merged Document. Make sure you select All Records. Then select in the Records per Document Page the Multiple Records drop down.

Step 19

On top of the pop-up windows click on the second tab called Multiple Record Layout. In there set the margins to 1p0. Check Column first and leave the spacing at 0.

Step 20

Select the last tab on the right called Options. Check Link Images. Then click the OK button on the bottom. Watch what happens.

Step 21

InDesign will automatically generate as many pages as needed and automatically insert the numbers. It’s magical :)

Step 22

When you zoom in (Z), you can see that each ticket has a number. Not just randomly but in sequence.

Conclusion

This is the final result. I exported the tickets as a PDF. I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial.

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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

I am a digital artist and graphic designer and love Illustrator and Photoshop. To design and and create is my passion and my everyday motivator.  

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  • http://www.thegraphicmac.com Jim

    While this is a great tutorial on “how to do XYZ” in theory – it should be noted that this is method is fine if you’re printing 50 tickets off your inkjet printer, but this is not how you should prepare files for commercial printing that have numbering. You would essentially be paying more for every page you create. Not to mention that you’re really creating more work for yourself.

    Any modern printer that handles numbering is going to tell you simply to create one single ticket, drop in a bogus number and color it with a specific pantone color, and let them worry about the best way to get it on there. They have computers and presses that handle nothing but numbering. Trying to “help” them out like this (or trying to out-smart them) is going to do nothing but cost you time and money.

    • Lysander

      As a commercial printer, I was hoping I would never have a customer submit such a
      file for say, 20,000 numbered forms with multiple placements. We would simply extract
      one of the pages and reformat, so all of the work they thought they were saving us
      was really for naught. A good example of why it’s important to check with us first.
      This one really sent my head spinning.

      • http://paws4thought.us Sherry

        I agree… and another thing to point out is if they bust these apart on a cutter, the numbers would no longer be in sequence. Page 1 at the top would be 001 and page 2 at the top SHOULD be 002 but it would be 019. What a *mess*.

        Definitely check with your printer!

      • DazMon

        Step 10, the score lines, don’t put them thru the artwork. Just use them to indicate where to score on the machine. thought I’d put this because nothing was ever mentioned further about the score, the whole sheet should get scored and you may as well number at the same time.

  • http://samanthaarmacost.com Samantha Armacost

    I had no idea inDesign could do this. Thanks for pointing it out.

    I could see this being used for addressing custom designed envelopes on the cheap if printed from an at home printer.

  • http://www.binocle.ch binocle

    Nice explanation of the “data merge” thing. Thanks.

    Personaly when I have to number a small number of elements, i use the pagination features, much more simple IMHO.

  • http://www.dimension-internet.com blueice

    Thank you for this explanation, very useful when you print on a copier.

  • Cheryl

    Excellent. SO many uses for this.

  • http://www.frankyaguilar.com Franky

    Very Clean!!!

  • Duluoz

    Jim is correct – only use InDesign’s data merge if you’re handling a low count of items (500 or less from my experience). Print shops will often use a more sophisticated Variable Data Printing (VDP) solution. Depending on your in-house printers, you may already have a VDP available.

  • http://www.studiografiko.com Grafiko

    great tutorial. the possibilities are endless for that trick

  • http://www.letitbeknown.dk Bendsen

    Neat! I knew that InDesign was able to do this – but not how to do it. So, thanks for sharing !

  • http://www.cgtrade.net/indesign imsraaia

    NICE… THANKS..

  • Rob L (spaceguy)

    I just did a ticket numbering job the other day. With CS4 Indesign, you can insert leading 0′s in the numbering, CS3 doesn’t. I then created a pdf file stepping them up as page spreads 6 up a page. This would be the easier approach.

    Then final output was Color laser printing on heavy 10pt stock front and back. Had to fiddle with the centering on the page a bit with the crops, but worked out ok.

    The data merge feature in CS4 is much better too than CS3 for final output to pdf formats. I did a job for certificates with 800 names from Excel, worked nicely.

  • Ryan

    Not only should the printer handle this, the imposition is all wrong. You should never, ever create crop marks in InDesign. The right way is to design the job at the final trim size. Let it create a merged multi-page document that way, then output a PDF with your specified bleed and crop marks. Then you can place that PDF into a new doc and step and repeat the pages. I shudder that people will read this and start drawing their own crop marks.

    As noted, unless you’re printing this at home, do NOT send anything to the printer like this!

    • Erik

      Actually there is no RIGHT way, every printer has different machines and ways of doing things, communicate with him he’s the only one that will tell you the right way otherwise you end up paying alot more just by thinking your way is the RIGHT way and the printed ends up fixing your sheet.

  • Julio

    It seems that some people here want to show that know better than others, but should know that there are some comercial printers that have different features os others, and crop marks may be very usefull if used right in those cases… Before saying what people should or not should do here you should see if you understand everything about this… i work just like he did here, and in 10 years of work nothing gone wrong until now, and i use those features, great tutorial, excelent work!!

  • http://www.bacos.net Emil B

    I use this feature when help a restaurant chain that frequently change their menus and have small differences between the diffrent restaurants, but I prefer to use a CSV file instead of a TXT because then you can have multiple text fields and multiple versions at the same time.

    I would also agree that it’s better to let your print shop do the numbering or other larger changes (over larger series), otherwise their “click-cost” that they pay to the company that provided their printer (Heidelberg, Canon and others) increases and thus the price that you or your customer pays.

  • Kelly

    This could prove to be a very useful tip for me. Every year, I have to throw out around 100+ award certificates each to different businesses, and it would be nice to just use a csv file to populate all the different names on each certificate instead of having to manually type them in on each and every page. I’ll have to play around with this. Thanks for the intro!

  • http://www.johnnyharu.com Johnny

    Very Interesting. I was unaware that crop marks would need to be manually created and thought setting the final output size would be sufficient.
    Nice to see someone elses perspective though! ;)

  • Thiago [Okami] Vieira

    Wow.

    You are my favourite “teacher” here, Simona. I always learn a lot in your tutorials. Thanks for share your expertise with us.

  • http://www.miraztutorials.com huwaw69

    this technique can be used in a lot of ways, thanks for sharing man!

  • Dan

    I just learned this trick a few days ago, myself. Thanks for confirming that I did it correctly.

    I wonder, though, if you can do the same automation with images. So that instead of having to change images (via Links) one by one, I could refer to a data file of the image names and/or locations. That could make use of the batch rename function in Adobe Bridge.

  • CAG

    THANKS! Tut was very helpful.

  • Joe

    Great tutorial! In the past I’ve left these kids of details to the printer but I now have a high capacity laser printer so we can do this in house. The only thing I would adjust is how the tickets are numbered. Say you are doing 500 tickets and numbering them as you do in the tutorial. Once printed they will need to be cut. Sheet one has tickets 1-18 and Sheet 2 has 19-36 etc. When you cut these in stacks on a large mechanical paper cutter, you end up with a stack that has tickets 1,19,37,55 etc in the stack. Is there a way to number them sequentially so that when cut, you end up with a stack that is tickets 1-28 and the next stack would be 29-56 etc? Then they could be padded. This would save the time of sorting them all when your finished cutting.

  • Scott

    Joe, I just had to do something similar, here’s what I did.

    Using your own job of 500 tickets as an example, 500 tickets @ 18-up, you will have 28 sheets being printed.

    In your excel file you will need two columns; let’s call the first one ‘Numbers’ and have it sequential starting at 001 and ending at 500 (actually, I’d number it to 504, just to fill all the sheets). Lets label the second column as ‘Re-order’ and have it sequential starting at 1 and ending at 28.

    Then highlight all 28 numbered cells in our ‘Re-order’ column, then copy and paste them into the first empty cell in our ‘Re-order’ column. We now have cells numbered 1 – 28 and then 1 – 28 again right underneath.

    Just keep pasting the 1 – 28 in the first empty cell until you have eighteen sets starting at 1 and ending at 28.

    Obviously, if we were talking about different quantities, these numbers would change but the concept is still the same.

    So now we have our two columns, 001 – 500 and 1-28, 1-28, 1-28, etc, select all and do a sort by whatever column you assigned as ‘Re-order’.

    What you have in your ‘Numbers’ column now is 18 sets of numbers set-up so that, when printed, each stack of tickets will be in sequential order.

    • Ankit Tanna

      You have a Genius daemon mind… thank you…

    • Rubén Gómez

      Can you explain me when you say “So now we have our two columns, 001 – 500 and 1-28, 1-28, 1-28, etc, select all and do a sort by whatever column you assigned as ‘Re-order’” in others words?

      I’m spanish and don’t understand what you mean with “do a sort”.

  • http://nformasdesign.com/blog/ nFormas design

    Thanks for sharing! I´ve been serching for this information!

  • Ed Hong

    I tried your method using inDesign CS4 (Mac OS) and it still gives me multiple pages for each number. So when I create multiple page data merge for numbers 1-250, it creates 250 separate pages (one for each number). Do you know why this might be?

    Thanks!

  • David

    Thank you so much. Your tutorial was very helpful. Someone needs to re-design InDesign to be more user-friendly. It is a very confusing program at times.

  • Meghan

    Fantastic! Thank you so much for your help. I’ve been trying for ages to get something like this to work, and here it was!

  • http://go.com Jorge

    I an a commercial printer, but we often do tickets with a digital press…not traditional offset. Therefore, this type of information is invaluable for us. No need to setup up the Rollem Numbering or fiddle with the variable data which can take up more time. Very handy trick…thanks.

  • http://www.nichterdesign.com Ed

    Wow something useful for once on this site. Anyone have any experience with doing 2000 newsletters with individual mailing addresses? Just trying to figure out a way to reduce our print time here at work. Currently we do labels, but if the addresses were printed directly on the newsletter it would save time.

    • Dena

      Ed, it’s similar to what’s shown above. First create the address file in Excel, but save as a .csv file. Then, create a text frame on your newsletter where the address will go. Once you have the .csv file loaded, insert your field titles. Complete the data merge similar to above. It’s actually very similar to doing a mail merge in Microsoft.

  • Ankit Tanna

    This one is Awesome….. I luv it….

  • mitch

    Thank you so much: We are printing tickets in-house and this is the solution.
    Excellent tutorial:
    Five stars

  • Diego

    Great tuto. Simple and really useful.

    Side note: It’s amazing how some people advise that you must to leave this job to your printer shop. Hahahahaha, with that kind of point of view every single tuto just must to be like:

    1st step: Leave this to the person who knows to do it.
    2nd step . Pay for it.
    3rd step. Done.

    hahahahahaha

    Thanks for the tutorial.

  • Sergy

    Thank you from Ukraine! You saved me! This is what I need!

  • http://www.pratikbagaria.com Pratik

    Nice tutorial.
    I have been using this method to make Visiting Cards, Identity Cards and Invitations for my organization.
    This is also useful when all the data is collected and ready in Excel, the final print file can be made quickly using InDesign…

  • shiraaz

    Thanks so much.

  • elyas

    is there a way to save each record as a pdf file and name the pdf file with a record number?

    i know we can do data merge and it will create one pdf file.

    Cheers

  • Lenore

    Nice tut! I used it to create some labels I needed, and it worked perfect. Thanks!

  • Stanley Bernard

    THIS WAY TO NUMBERING TICKETS IS GREAT.
    IF I HAVE A DOBLE NUMBERING (TICKETS+STUB), PLEASE SOMEONE CAN TELL ME HOW TOM DOI IT ?

  • Tony

    You are a legend! This has saved me from what would have been many long and tedious hours or work.
    I thank you so much for this fantastic post!

  • http://www.luktsudd.se Joel

    Thanks!
    LIFE SAVER!

  • Diana

    I’ve been trying for quite some time but the only thing that would copy is the number box itself. The first time I tried this as a trial run it worked perfectly. However, after I finished all my artwork, it started acting up.

    Whenever I tried the data merge, it would constantly show up as a column of the numbers on one page. I tried it once with “single record” and the number did appear at the right position on each page but still without any of the background artwork. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong, I’ve been over this a thousand times.

  • http://www.kewlgrafix.com missnina

    I have a similar type situation as the one listed above. The tickets I need to print have multiple fields
    ( ex: Row 1 Seat 1 ) Could I use an excel spread sheet/.csv file and fill in the individual fields like a mail merge?

    • Jodi

      You just need to make a spread sheet, export from excel as CSV, with all of your fields, then place the named feilds on the artwork where you want them to populate.

      Its very easy.

      there is a better tutorial out there by “the indesigner” that explains this in depth (with a video) and multiple images, fields, etc.

  • DanComu

    When I go in to try to edit this file and and more numbers, InDesign crashes every time. HELP!

  • Eggy

    Hello!!

    Thanks so much for this easy and complete tutorial.
    I wish to add one little thing of importance, make sure to unlock all layers when merging data, otherwise nothing happens. So it goes with random objects roaming free on the master page. Lastly, one thing I noticed, it is important to cover the whole area of the ticket with the text layer containing the data source tag, otherwise the individual tickets overflow the layout and hang in the margin randomly, rather than flow to the next page.

    xoxoxo

    For Stanley Bernard: in order to create two number entries, simply add another line of text in the block already created, tweak it in place to perfection with text formatting options (space before, after, line spacing, etc.) and then click again on the data source in the merge data pannel. And voilà!

  • ErinZ

    Hello! I just used this tutorial and it’s super but I have one question/problem… I numbered my tickets through 447 and at 100, 200, 300, and 400 the zeros were dropped?! How can I fix this issue?
    Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out!

  • Sean

    Seems that including bleed on the ticket throws everything off… any suggestions?