Comments on: Create Numbered Tickets the Easy Way in InDesign

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:24:04 +0000

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.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:11:01 +0000

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.

By: CAG

CAG — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:26:43 +0000

THANKS! Tut was very helpful.

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:10:08 +0000

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.

By: huwaw69

huwaw69 — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:32:31 +0000

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

By: Thiago [Okami] Vieira

Thiago [Okami] Vieira — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:41:06 +0000

Wow.

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

By: Johnny

Johnny — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:55:44 +0000

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!

By: Kelly

Kelly — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:44:00 +0000

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!

By: Emil B

Emil B — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:23:18 +0000

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.

By: Julio

Julio — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:59:22 +0000

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!!