InDesign XML imports ignore tagged styles

I was having a horrendous time getting styles to apply to tags properly in InDesign while importing my content in through XML. My data would come in to the InDesign document just fine and then export to a PDF without any trouble – however the styles weren’t working properly. All of the text would grab the first style and intermittently switch to other styles.

Here’s the trick: when you use InDesign Server to merge XML into InDesign documents, you have to put a Paragraph Separator character between the XML tags… sometimes. You’ll be able to tell where you need it and where you don’t when you start importing data. I just included the \u2029 character in my XML files where it made a difference (style change).

I didn’t notice the character from InDesign exported XML at first because Altova XMLSpy and Visual Studio 2005 don’t show the paragraph separator. In fact, it appears to be a zero-footprint character (in my UTF-8 files). It saves in there and can exist in there but was generally impossible for me to see. (Maybe I have a local setting wrong?)

Sassy technical books are the best

I bought an O’Reilly e-book by Dorothy J. Hoskins the other day about InDesign and XML. It’s got some really great and very appropriate little nuggets of brilliance included throughout.

Click OK. You will see that the text in the text frame is now styled with your Paragraph styles. (This is typically the moment when you involuntarily cheer, if indeed you do not leap from your chair.) Save your file.

Yaaay! I cheered and then saved immediately!