What is a placeholder?

A placeholder is a spot in your layout that DataMergeStudio fills with data. It’s the bridge between a field in your spreadsheet and a place on the page.

What a placeholder is

Think of a placeholder as a labelled slot in your design that says "data goes here." When you merge, each record’s value drops into that slot, and the surrounding design stays put. One placeholder, filled differently for every record, is what turns one layout into hundreds of documents.

Placeholders aren’t only text

A placeholder can hold more than a line of text. Depending on what the slot is for, it can receive:

• text – names, prices, descriptions;
• an image – placed into a frame from a path or file name in your data;
• a QR code or barcode – generated from a value in your data.

From placeholder to data

A placeholder isn’t tied to a field until you connect it. That connection is your mapping: which field feeds which placeholder. Autolink can make most of those connections for you by matching names, and you can adjust any of them yourself.

Next

Look at a single placeholder up close: Inspecting and Editing a Single Placeholder