EasyCatalog CS

Ideal for time-critical publications, EasyCatalog can dramatically speed up page make-up time and ensure your documents remain error free. Trusted by thousands of users in over thirty countries across six continents, EasyCatalog has quickly established itself as one of the most powerful and flexible database publishing solutions for Adobe InDesign.
The source of your data can be something as simple as a file or, via an optional module, an ODBC database or XML file. If you've invested time and money developing a database, why not utilize it to the fullest extent by producing your print catalogs directly from it?
It's not just catalogs EasyCatalog can produce - brochures, price lists, or directories can all be effortlessly generated.
EasyCatalog also offers powerful ways to get your data onto the document - templates can be designed that specify how a record should appear when it is placed on the page. Store these templates in a library and complex pages can be constructed in seconds, containing live data, simply by dragging and dropping.

Features
Import from anywhere
Import data from something as simple as a text file - perhaps a price list created in Excel - or directly from an ODBC-compatible database via the optional ODBC Data Provider module.

Manipulate and format your data
Data is displayed in a spreadsheet-style panel within InDesign - format, sort, group and query your data right from within InDesign. You don't need to return to the source of your data to do something as simple as sorting or querying your data - manipulate your data to show just the records you want to work with, in the order you require.

Link to your document
Link your data to an InDesign document - both text and pictures can be imported at the click of a button. The link is bi-directional, so any changes made to the data on the document can be sent back to the data source.
By creating a link from your database to your document, you can ensure that your document always contains the latest information from your database - ideal for publications where the source data is likely to change from time to time. The link is bi-directional, so you can modify the data on the document - for instance, if you find your source data to be in error, you could modify it on the document and update the database to ensure the error is never reproduced.

Insert Tabular Data
reating InDesign tables has never been so easy. Use your EasyCatalog data panel to define the running order of records and fields, and hit the insert button. A new InDesign table will be inserted in the document, containing your live, linked, data.
EasyCatalog was designed to save time, and once you've inserted a table this easily you'll wonder how you ever managed previously. If you like to apply a range of attributes to rows and cells, EasyCatalog will expand or contract your table whilst obeying the overall design aesthetics where possible.

Check for Errors
EasyCatalog can check the integrity of your documents to ensure the document content matches the data source.
Reduce costly mistakes by checking the document for errors - EasyCatalog will highlight fields on the document and in the panel whose content does not match the original data.

Update the Document
If your data has changed at the last-minute, EasyCatalog can automatically update your document - or all of the documents contained within an InDesign book. Any formatting you have applied will be preserved where possible.