Quark Forums

Platform: Mac and PC
Applications: Quark XPress, MS Word, MS Excel
XTensions: none

Hi all,

If you ever find yourself wanting for an auto-numbering capability in Quark, like to do tickets for example, here is a quick and easy way to do it.

Here's my 12 step program: :wink: [list=1:d7a0bf65a8]

In Quark XPress: Prepare your master page with the layout of your tickets mounted 10 ups.

Set a text box that will hold the unique number on every tickets.

Chain link those text boxes to your master chain (the chain icon at the top of the master page).

Set your document for auto page insertion (in Preferences->Document)

In Excel: Type 1 in cell A1

Type 2 in cell A2

Select those two cell and extend your selection downward by dragging the little square dot at the bottom right of your selection. (you should see a little text box next to your pointer showing the value of the adjacent cell, drag downward until it reaches 600.)

Save your document as Tab Delimited Text.

In Word: Open your Tab Delimited text file and replace all Paragraph Marks with "<\b>" (without the quotes).

Save your document as Text Only.

Back to Quark: Select the first text box on page 1 that will receive the number.

Get text (Your Text Only file) with "Include style sheets" selected.

Voilà!

[/list:o:d7a0bf65a8]
Hope this helps!

That's pretty slick! :D

Later,
Tom

Très bon. Merci Michel.

Rachel

Very Good trick. Is it possible to create auto numbering for pages of products. e.g. 15 products per page for 15 pages, with a nominated starting number?

arty:

Very Good trick. Is it possible to create auto numbering for pages of products. e.g. 15 products per page for 15 pages, with a nominated starting number?

Could you expand on that? I believe it is possible but I would need more specifics to figure out a solution.

I have a similar question.

I noticed this thread a few days back and it got me interested.
I can definately see how using excel to insert the numbers is very useful and quick.

What I don't see is how you could get this to work..?

Let's say I follow instructions to the letter. Now what?
Will quark auto-add each new page as the number of records in excel exceed the number of text boxes in the first quark page?

What I mean is, say I have 600 quark raffle tickets I have to make. I use your excellent suggestion of using excel to compliment quark. But how do I tell quark to only add one excel record per text box per raffle ticket. I don't want to create 600 pages in one quark document, and I don't want 600 duplicate documents?

So then how does it work?
Does this process happen at the printing stage?

Thanks :)

The advice is quite good, but quark does insert as many pages as it takes to fill the number set in excel. I found I had to work out exactly how many I needed and then work around that.

arty:

The advice is quite good, but quark does insert as many pages as it takes to fill the number set in excel. I found I had to work out exactly how many I needed and then work around that.

Hi Arty,

It will if your "number" box happens to be your automatic text box from the desried master page (that, plus auto page insertion set to anything but "OFF" in your doc prefs).

Hope this helps!

It does! Thanks for your help Michel...

Michel:

So then it's true. If I have 600 raffle tickets then I am looking at having a whopping huge quark file; smething like 200 megs.

What about 3055 tickets?

I guess this trick is only really useful for small projects. Something like a calendar.

Either way, thank you. It's a good tip!

:)

webguy:

Michel:

So then it's true. If I have 600 raffle tickets then I am looking at having a whopping huge quark file; smething like 200 megs.

What about 3055 tickets?

I guess this trick is only really useful for small projects. Something like a calendar.

Either way, thank you. It's a good tip!

Hi Webguy,

Sorry, I seemed to have missed your first post, believe me when I say that I wasn't ignoring you! ;-)

That being said, this trick does not in any way reduced the document requirements (doc size) you would normally nedd, should you do this manually/. As a rule of thumb, I try never to exceed 100 pages Quark docs (and that is for "mostly" text pages). Furthermore, there is nothingh is this tip that says you HAVE TO start your numbering at 1 (or that you have to increment this value by 1). Excel is flexible enough to do all sorts of "series".

This tip was publish w/r to users working on either the Mac or trhe PC platform. There are other solutions to generating those numbers lists: Applescript, Visual Basic, Perl, Javascript, etc. The tools I choose to mention are available on both platform and accessible for the more "programming-challenged" user. ;-)

Hope this helps!

In my case, the autonumbering was for product codes that appear next to each other within a certain amount of pages. It was only 15 pages but there were 30 products per page. Thanks to Michel, I only had to set 2 numbers and then I didn't need to proof read for missed numbers!

Hi all,

For those of you that do not have of care for Excel. I have created the following Applescript application (I am sorry for the Windows crowd but this a Mac thing only) that will generate simple series.

Simply copy and paste the following code into a blank Script Editor window and save it as application (I named mine "Series Generator").

[code:1:6e51204c22]repeat
set StartDialog to display dialog "What is your start number for this serie?" default answer "1" with icon note
try
set StartNum to (text returned of StartDialog) as integer
exit repeat
on error
display dialog "Integers only please!" with icon caution
end try
end repeat

repeat
set EndDialog to display dialog "What is your end number for this serie?" default answer "100" with icon note
try
set EndNum to (text returned of EndDialog) as integer
exit repeat
on error
display dialog "Integers only please!" with icon caution
end try
end repeat

repeat
set IncrementDialog to display dialog "What is the increment betwenn each number?" default answer "1" with icon note
try
set Increment to (text returned of IncrementDialog) as integer
exit repeat
on error
display dialog "Integers only please!" with icon caution
end try
end repeat


if (StartNum < EndNum and Increment > 0) or (StartNum > EndNum and Increment < 0) then
set NumList to {}
repeat with i from StartNum to EndNum by Increment
set end of NumList to i
end repeat

set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"<\\b>"}
set NumString to NumList as string
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims

set NumFile to choose file name with prompt "Where would you like to save this serie?" default name "*.xtg"


set aFile to open for access NumFile with write permission
try
write NumString to aFile
close access aFile
on error
close access aFile
end try
else
display dialog "Sorry, I cannot serialize " & StartNum & " to " & EndNum & " by " & Increment & "!" with icon stop
end if
[/code:1:6e51204c22]
This will work as well for negative increment say from 1000 to 1 by -1.
I am sorry to say though that it won't accept any numbers other than integers... A future version might...

Hope this helps!

So this does not work for me, and I would love it to.

What is happening is the following:

I link the master link to my first text box, then link down through the rest.
I have gotten all the word/excel stuff figured out. But now when I get text, it places all the numbers in a few text boxes with lines through some of them.

What am I doing wrong?

Sam Pease:

So this does not work for me, and I would love it to.

What is happening is the following:

I link the master link to my first text box, then link down through the rest.
I have gotten all the word/excel stuff figured out. But now when I get text, it places all the numbers in a few text boxes with lines through some of them.

What am I doing wrong?

Send me your master and text file, I"ll take a look...