Release: DocsFlow 2.0 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
It’s with a great sigh of relief that, after nearly half a year of substantial internal re-engineering and intense development, we today release DocsFlow 2.0, the much anticipated follow-up to our acclaimed Google Docs connector plug-in. DocsFlow 2.0 offers many customer-driven improvements and new features. The new Pro level gives you full export to Google Docs, and full updating, where you can push-merge your changes from InDesign back into your linked Google Docs document, along with spreadsheet support.
New lynda.com course showing DocsFlow and WordsFlow
Anne-Marie Concepción has published a new online video course Using Word and InDesign Together on lynda.com that includes brief overviews of both WordsFlow and DocsFlow.
The course itself looks great, as you’d expect from Anne-Marie, and the two short overviews of our products are spot on. She mentions DocsFlow 2.0, which includes two-way linking to Google Docs, and which we’re just about to release in the next few days.
Beta release: DocsFlow 2.0 beta 4 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This beta adds support for OpenOffice (ODF) files, enables multi-document import, and addresses minor issues found during testing.
Release: InData 2.0.4 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This patch release improves cross-reference handling and primary text flow support.
Release: InCatalog 2.11 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This release of InCatalog adds key from text ^, handles pasted links better, and makes several other improvements.
Beta release: DocsFlow 2.0 beta 3 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This beta introduces Pro and non-Pro-level licensing, adds visual indicators to DocsFlow-managed stories, increases import flexibility, and addresses issues found during testing.
Beta release: DocsFlow 2.0 beta 2 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This beta addresses some initial issues found during testing.
Release: DocsFlow 1.6.1 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This patch release of DocsFlow resolves a conflict with our WordsFlow product and adds quality and stability improvements for InDesign story updating.
Beta release: DocsFlow 2.0 beta 1 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
We’re happy to announce the immediate availability of DocsFlow 2.0 beta 1, which adds long-awaited support for exporting InDesign stories to Google Docs. In addition, Google Docs documents can now be updated from their linked InDesign stories. We’ve also made improvements to the Place from Google Docs dialog and redesigned DocsFlow’s internals to better support some planned features in upcoming releases.
InDesign CC upgrade plans
With Adobe’s InDesign CC (Creative Cloud) version just released last week, we wanted to let you know our plans for upgrading our plug-ins to work with CC. (None of them are CC-capable yet.)
First, we’re 100% committed to upgrading all our InDesign plug-ins — have no fear!
Second, we’re just starting the conversion effort, admittedly quite late. With our small engineering team (which is normally an advantage in terms of agility and staying close to you, our customers), we decided to give priority to finishing DocsFlow 2.0. (We’ve done that, and its beta is now available.) So now our focus will be 100% on upgrading all plug-in products to CC.
Third, anyone who purchases a CS5/5.5/CS6 plug-in license on or after January 1, 2013, will receive a free upgrade to a CC license.
Release: InData 2.0.3 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This update of InData addresses header/footer issues when working with facing pages, adds a new picture positioning option, and makes all flavors of snapshot files selectable again.
Release: WordsFlow 1.1.1 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This patch release improves updating and addresses situations where imported Word and Excel documents were losing their Import Options settings.
Release: DocsFlow 1.6 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This release of DocsFlow introduces major improvements to table handling and improves the overall quality of the merge process.
See you at PePcon 2013 in Austin!
We’re happy to announce that we’ll be both sponsoring and attending the Print + ePublishing Conference (PePcon) 2013 conference in Austin, Texas, April 28–May 1. Marci, Anne-Marie and David have always done an outstanding job on these conferences, keeping them relevant, with great speakers, great food and attractive venues.
This time, Joe Mathia and John Whitney will be there from Em Software. Joe was at PePcon 2011 in Alexandria with Chris Ryland (who was alone last year in San Francisco), but since Joe and John are both local Texas boys (Dallas and Austin, respectively), they get to have all the fun!
We’ll be showing our current data-driven publishing products, InData, InCatalog, Xtags for InDesign, and our newer editorial/workflow products WordsFlow and DocsFlow.
In particular, we’ll be showing the latest WordsFlow and DocsFlow versions with major table-handling improvements, and we hope to be showing some major new functionality in DocsFlow as well! (Hint: it might involve edits flowing in both directions. ;-))
So please stop by and take a look at what’s new (and old).
See you there!
Release: WordsFlow 1.1 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This release of WordsFlow offers simpler options for placing files with WordsFlow, introduces major improvements to Excel file tracking and table merging, and improves the overall quality of the merge process.
Release: DocsFlow 1.5 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
We’re happy to announce DocsFlow 1.5, which adds support for Google Drive files, improves the drag’n’drop workflow, converts page breaks to InDesign frame breaks, and enhances the quality of story updating.
Release: InData 2.0.2 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This update of InData improves compatibility with FileMaker Pro 12.
Release: InData 2.0.1 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This patch release of InData improves compatibility with Primary Text Frames and fixes an issue with wandering header/footer frames in CS6.
Release: InFlow 2.3 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This minor release of InFlow adds a progress bar and fixes an issue with wandering frames in CS6.
Release: WordsFlow 1.0.2 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This patch release improves compatibility with linked Excel files.
Release: InData 2.0 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
We’re pleased to announce a major new release of InData, which, along with various accumulated fixes and improvements, finally adds full support for text anchors, hyperlinks and cross-references.
Release: InCatalog 2.10 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This release of InCatalog adds support for a keyboard shortcuts-based auto-tag’n’update-style workflow, includes a fix for where tags could spontaneously appear in tables, and addresses various issues with link markers, empty links, empty keys, and ODBC updating.
Release: WordsFlow 1.0.1 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This release fixes a serious bug with update failures in the face of Word documents with embedded graphics, and adds some behind-the-scenes enhancements.
Release: DocsFlow 1.4.8 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This patch release addresses a loss-of-connection issue and includes several improvements for updating from Google Docs.
Release: WordsFlow 1.0 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
We’re happy to announce the first official release of WordsFlow, our InDesign plug-in designed to make a huge improvement in your Word/Excel-based production workflow.
Release: Xdata 4.3.4 for QuarkXPress 8/9
This patch release of Xdata addresses an issue with snapshots generated by FileMaker Pro 12.
WordsFlow 1.0 review from InDesign Secrets
David Blatner of InDesign Secrets has been using our new product WordsFlow for a bit, and is very excited about it:
I’m trying hard not to type phrases like “Most useful plug-in ever,” but I have to tell you: I’m sitting here with my mouth agape, heart beating faster, and thinking “This is what I’ve wanted for 20 years.”
In short, I’m playing with WordsFlow, a plug-in from Em Software that fundamentally changes the way you’ll work with Word documents.
Release: DocsFlow 1.4.7 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This release supports placing public documents even when not in the user’s account, and fixes a slew of minor bugs.
Release: WordsFlow 0.4 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This still-in-preview release fixes more bugs found during pre-release testing.
Release: WordsFlow 0.3 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
This still-in-preview release bumps the expiration date and fixes some smaller bugs found during testing.
Release: DocsFlow 1.4.6 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This patch release addresses Mac OS X 10.7 & 10.8 installation issues and improves link handling.
Release: Xcatalog 3.5.4 for QuarkXPress 8/9
This patch release of Xcatalog fixes a DD selection problem introduced in the 3.5.3 release.
DocsFlow accelerates annual report production at literacy project
In general, we’re happy to donate software to qualified educational institutions (for teaching applications) and to non-profit organizations, and we did so for Wisconsin Literacy a few months ago. Sheila McGrath kindly reports back with a very positive review of using DocsFlow with InDesign for their annual report production.
Thank you so much for giving us DocsFlow. Wisconsin Literacy produced their annual report using DocsFlow, with me as an off-site volunteer graphic designer.
(Click on the annual report cover for the full pdf version.)
DocsFlow for CS4 worked very well for flowing text into InDesign. I was not able to get custom style-mapping to work automatically (likely an older Mac Javascript version on my machine rather than a DocsFlow problem) but I had no problem importing text into InDesign smoothly. I just re-imported text after changes and my styles were retained, so all was well. The Links panel indications of file changes worked fine also.
Release: WordsFlow 0.2 for InDesign CS5/CS5.5/CS6
We’ve just released WordsFlow 0.2, our second preview release, which is one step closer to final release.
Release: WordsFlow 0.1 for InDesign CS6
As proud “parents,” we’re happy to announce that our latest product, WordsFlow, is now available for the first time in a preview release for your testing pleasure! (There’s also a back story to WordsFlow.)
WordsFlow – announcing a new product
We’ve just added a section to our site about WordsFlow, a new product.
InData builds annual commercial real estate directory
Mike Docker, InData developer extraordinaire, shares with us how he used InData with InDesign to build an annual commercial real estate directory.
Estates Gazette (EG) is the weekly magazine for the UK commercial property trade, and each year it produces a directory of warehousing and distribution parks across the country with space available for rent or purchase.
Overview
The data is held in an Excel spreadsheet, which is updated from information provided by property agents. This comes into the EG offices at different times and is handled by different staff members. Also, each distribution park can be represented by multiple agents, so it is not uncommon for one park to be entered into the spreadsheet several times.
As publication date approaches the agents are reminded to check and amend the data they have provided, and the updated spreadsheet becomes the source for the printed directory.
The magazine’s production team had been using cut-and-paste techniques to get the text on to the page but they approached the task with dread as each year rolled around. I persuaded them to give InData a try.
Release: DocsFlow 7/8.1.4.5 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This patch release fixes spreadsheet imports and addresses styling issues.
Release: DocsFlow 7/8.1.4.4 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This patch release addresses a problem with loss of styling.
Release: Xdata 8/9.4.3.3 for QuarkXPress 8/9
This patch release of Xdata addresses an issue with quoted strings in prototypes.
Release: Xcatalog 8/9.3.5.3 for QuarkXPress 8/9
This patch release of Xcatalog addresses an issue with FileMaker Pro 12 and adds support for the picture tool while tagging.
Release: InCatalog 7/8.2.9.6 for InDesign CS5/5.5/6
This patch release of InCatalog fixes issues with FileMaker Pro 12 and text pasted into existing links.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7/8.1.4.3 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5/6
This patch release improves document updating.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7/8.1.4.2 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5/6
This patch release fixes problems with style mapping and with deleted documents being displayed in the Place dialog.
DocsFlow gets “exceptionally good” rating in a full review from InDesign Magazine
David Blatner, one of the patriarchs of the InDesign ecosystem, in the June/July 2012 issue of InDesign Magazine, reviewed the latest version of DocsFlow and gave it 4 stars for “exceptionally good.”
David opens with a great story:
For me, one of the most memorable highlights at the PePcon conference this year was a simple conversation in the hallway with an attendee about the DocsFlow plug-in. Staring at me in near-disbelief, he stammered, “You mean I can have all my writers and editors working in Google Docs, and have their changes automatically update in InDesign? That’s awesome!” Yes, yes it is.
Release: InCatalog 6/7/8.2.9.5 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5/6
This release of InCatalog adds support for InDesign CS6, officially ends support for CS4, improves compatibility with InDesign’s Smart Text Reflow and fixes issues with InDesign-flavored tagged text.
Release: InFlow 6/7/8.2.2.6 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5/6
This release of InFlow adds support for InDesign CS6, officially ends support for CS4, and improves compatibility with InDesign features.
Release: InData 6/7/8.1.9.1 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5/6
This release of InData adds support for Adobe InDesign CS6, officially ends support for CS4, and improves the import experience.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7/8.1.4.1 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5/6
This release of DocsFlow adds support for Adobe InDesign CS6, adds links for images, and includes many improvements to importing and updating.
Beta release: DocsFlow 8.1.4 beta 2 for InDesign CS6
This beta improves the quality and reliability of DocsFlow updates.
InCatalog a critical part of skiing/snowboarding guide workflow
Chris Gill, Editor of Where to Ski and Snowboard, Britain’s leading winter sports resort guide, writes about how InCatalog acts as a critical part of their automated editorial processes.
Where to Ski and Snowboard is the British skier’s “bible”—a comprehensive and detailed annual guidebook running to 700 pages, covering of all the major ski resorts in Europe and North America. It was first published in 1994, became an annual publication a few years later and is now in its 15th edition.
InData builds antiquarian books catalog
Pia Oliver at Randall House Rare Books in Santa Barbara tells how they use InData to save “enormous time.”
We create our rare book catalogues utilizing InData to get the data from our database into our layout program. We use FileMaker Pro v.10 and InDesign CS4 (previously we used QuarkXpress). Since our data is very strictly formatted and our catalogues consist of unique items, averaging 500-800 at a time, it would be dreadful having to do all this formatting by hand. The plug-in saves us enormous time.
(Click on the graphic above for the full pdf version.)
I have attached a pdf of the finished product of one of our catalogues created this way. All of the information for the books are taken from approximately 25 different fields for each record/book. I first began using InData for a catalogue that consisted of more than 1,000 books.
InData helps a building materials company
Dave Karras, Marketing Manager at Wimsatt Building Materials, has a great success story about using InData to build a whole range of marketing materials.
As a wholesale distributor of building products, Wimsatt Building Materials delivers roofing, siding, insulation, windows, doors, and composite lumber to builders and contractors across the state of Michigan. With 20,000+ SKUs in over 1500 categories, our Marketing Department had a formidable challenge in communicating building product information to several audiences across multiple media. Our annual printed contractor catalog, our regularly-updated internal price pages, and our online catalog were all isolated production processes that required a great deal of manual effort on the part of the design team and proofreading on the part of our Inventory Department.
Beta release: DocsFlow 8.1.4 beta 1 for InDesign CS6
We’re happy to announce the immediate availability of DocsFlow 8.1.4 beta 1 for Adobe InDesign CS6.
Beta release: InCatalog 8.2.9 beta 1 for InDesign CS6
We’re happy to announce the immediate availability of InCatalog 8.2.9 beta 1 for Adobe InDesign CS6.
Beta release: InData 8.1.9 beta 1 for InDesign CS6
We’re happy to announce the immediate availability of InData 8.1.9 beta 1 for Adobe InDesign CS6. We’re looking forward to seeing the layouts folks come up with by combining InData with CS6’s new Liquid Layout and Alternate Layout features.
DocsFlow is a huge time saver at a non-profit
David Rager, a designer/art director in Paris who works with a non-profit organization called The Ecology Center in California, has been using DocsFlow recently and is quite enthusiastic about the product.
I’ve been plugging away with DocsFlow over the last few months and found it that it’s been a huge time saver. What I love most is that it takes away the trouble I often run into with the conventional edit, proofread, approval, repeat system. My clients are also very happy that they get to interact with a live document and see how their text edits change the way the design looks and feels.
Our first “DocsFlow project” came back from press recently, 5 contributors were involved, each updating their own docs and everyone is very pleased with the results.
(Click on the graphic to review the issue.)
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.4 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
We just posted DocsFlow 1.4, in which we made further improvements to placing and managing large numbers of Google Docs documents, improved usability, added an option for secure, browser-based sign-ins, and fixed a few gremlins.
Release: InData 6/7.1.9 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5
This minor release adds ExtendScript access to InData’s import methods on Mac OS as well as full scripting access to InData’s prototype story and story names.
Release: InCatalog 6/7.2.9.4 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5
This patch release fixes a problem with the handling of special “start file” tags in InDesign Tags-tagged fields.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.3.1 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
This patch release makes staying signed in while working with documents containing many GDocs document links much more possible, and also addresses problems with mis-mapped styles, paragraph spacing and dates in spreadsheets.
Release: InCatalog 6/7.2.9.3 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5
This patch release fixes a problem with truncated keys and improves product stability.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.3 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
We just released DocsFlow 1.3, which includes several new usability features, substantial performance improvements, and a handful of bug fixes.
See you at PePcon 2012 in San Francisco, May 14—16!
We’re happy to announce that we’ll be both sponsoring and attending the Print + ePublishing Conference (PePcon) 2012 conference in San Francisco, May 14—16.
We’ll have a table in the conference area. We’d love to show you what we’re doing and make new friends while catching up with the old!
David and Anne-Marie always put on a rousing conference, and this looks better than ever. Plus, you’ll get a peek at what’s coming out in CS-next from Adobe.
Our last year’s conference trip was a resounding success, and we hope to repeat that in Bagdad-by-the-Bay.
See you there!
Release: InCatalog 6/7.2.9.2 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5
This patch release fixes compatibility issues with InCopy, InDesign libraries, CJK languages and the indent-to-here character.
Release: InData 6/7.1.8.2 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5
This patch release addresses issues with scripting, indent-to-here characters, the format() function and CJK systems.
Release: InFlow 6/7.2.2.4 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5
This patch release of InFlow addresses a minor serialization issue.
Release: Xcatalog 8/9.3.5.2 for QuarkXPress 8/9
This Xcatalog patch release addresses problems with indent-to-here characters and corrupt links.
Release: Xdata 8/9.4.3.2 for QuarkXPress 8/9
This patch release of Xdata addresses problems with the format() function and adds pass-thru of the indent-to-here character.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.2.1 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
This patch release fixes crash issues with using Edit Original and displaying the Place Google Docs Documents dialog.
Update: DocsFlow 6.1.2 for InDesign CS4
This minor update addresses an incompatibility with DocsFlow 6.1.2 for InDesign CS4 and some Windows 7 installations. If you’ve experienced problems signing in to your Google Docs account with the initial DocsFlow 6.1.2 release, please remove DocsFlow from your Plug-Ins folder and then download and install this 6.1.2 re-release.
We apologize for the inconvenience of these extra steps and hope that you find DocsFlow to be a valuable addition to your Google Docs workflow.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1.2 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
We’re very pleased to announce DocsFlow 1.2, which adds support for spreadsheets, drag-and-drop and a host of other improvements resulting from many hours of production use by our expanding community of DocsFlow users.
Release: Xdata 8/9.4.3.1 for QuarkXPress 8/9
This minor release of Xdata fixes some long-standing data format issues.
Release: Xcatalog 8/9.3.5.1 for QuarkXPress 8/9
This minor release of Xcatalog improves the compatibility of text links with copying and pasting.
Release: DocsFlow 6/7.1 for InDesign CS4 & CS5/5.5
We’re pleased to announce DocsFlow 7.1, which, along with general fixes and improvements, adds several new features including full tables support and footnote styling.
We’re also very pleased to announce DocsFlow 6.1 for Adobe InDesign CS4, available immediately (see DocsFlow for InDesign CS4 sidebar).
Early DocsFlow release reactions
It’s only been a couple of days, but we’ve seen a huge amount of interest in DocsFlow since its official release on Tuesday.
The Twittersphere has exploded with interest (keep scrolling down for dynamic refresh).
And The Unofficial Apple Weblog has an enthusiastic response.
We sponsored the InDesign Secrets podcast this week with Anne-Marie Concepcion and David Blatner, and they talked about DocsFlow in podcast 156 at some length (starting at 15:00). The whole podcast is great (as usual).
DocsFlow 7.0 for InDesign CS5/5.5 released
We’re thrilled to announce that, after almost exactly two years of development, and several months of intense beta testing, we’ve released the first version of DocsFlow (7.0) for InDesign CS5 and CS5.5. DocsFlow is a plugin that connects Google Docs to InDesign, for a breakthrough in affordable collaborative publishing.
Beta release: DocsFlow 7.0 beta 4 for InDesign CS5/5.5
DocsFlow 7.0 beta 4 (for InDesign CS5/5.5, Mac OS and Windows) is now available for download and testing. We think this version represents a huge step forward, as it fixes a few major updating and stability problems that were hampering usability. We’ve also made further improvements to the merge process and made various other fixes and improvements that are detailed below.
Beta release: DocsFlow 7.0 beta 3 for InDesign CS5/5.5
DocsFlow 7.0 beta 3 (for InDesign CS5/5.5, Mac OS and Windows) is now available for download and testing. This version adds style mapping, as well as many internal changes which improve the import and update experience.
Release: InCatalog 6/7.2.9.1 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5
This release of InCatalog improves link editing at an insertion point, and fixes several bugs.
Beta release: DocsFlow 7.0 beta 2 for InDesign CS5/5.5
DocsFlow 7.0 beta 2 (for InDesign CS5/5.5, Mac OS and Windows) is now available for download and testing. We encourage you to upgrade to this version if you’re using DocsFlow, as it fixes some update merge problems, improves stability, and builds in some debugging tools to help us diagnose future merge problems.
Beta release: DocsFlow 7.0 beta 1 for InDesign CS5/5.5 Windows
After a long struggle with packaging the complex technology behind DocsFlow, we’re very happy to announce the release of the first Windows beta version of DocsFlow 7.0 for both InDesign CS5 and CS5.5.
You can download it from the sidebar on the right or from the (same) sidebar on the main product page. When you download and expand the linked .zip file, you’ll find an outermost folder Em DocsFlow 7.0 beta 1, containing the folder Plug-ins for InDesign CS5 & CS5.5, containing the actual installation file docsflow70b1_installer_win.zxp, which you double-click to install.
(Adobe Extensions Manager will install the proper version (CS5 vs CS5.5) based on what you have installed on your system.)
We’re working on beta 2 for both platforms (Mac OS and Windows), containing some important bug fixes and feature additions. We hope to pick up the release pace, now that we’ve jumped the initial release hurdle.
Release: InCatalog 6/7.2.9 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5
This release adds compatibility for Adobe’s 7.5.1 update to InDesign CS5.5, improves scripting support and fixes some minor problems.
InDesign CS5.5 plug-ins now released
As promised (and explained), we’re happy to announce the release of all our plug-ins for InDesign CS5.5 in concert with our current CS4/CS5 releases.
When you download any of our plug-ins, and double-click the .zxp installer file in the Plug-ins for InDesign CS5 folder, Adobe’s Extension Manager will install the appropriate CS5 or CS5.5 plugin, depending on your most-recently installed version of InDesign. If you have both InDesign CS5 and CS5.5 installed, and would like to install the plug-in for use in CS5, you will need to manually start Extension Manager CS5 and use its File > Install Extension to select the plug-in’s .zxp installer file.
Thanks for your patience, if you were waiting!
Release: InData 6/7.1.8.1 for InDesign CS4/5/5.5
This release simply adds compatibility for Adobe’s 7.5.1 update to InDesign CS5.5.