“I love InData”
I love InData and use it to create long, complex catalogs. Thanks for a great product!
–Amy G
“I have used this product for over 11 years and could not live without it”
I just want to tell you that I have used this product for over 11 years and could not live without it. Exporting data out of our database and having it magically formatted to look beautiful sure is sweet. Of course, I have to write all the scripting/programming for it to look so nice, but it sure makes it fast. I use InData in 20 books that range in pages from 300-800, and I love using it.
–Greg Kemp, contexo | media
“InData & InCatalog have allowed us to complete many projects”
Just wanted to let you know that InData & InCatalog have worked great, saving us a lot of time and money.
InData & InCatalog has allowed us to complete many projects that we couldn’t have done without them.
—Steve Parrish, Lone Star Pet Supply
“your customer service is, hands down, the best I have ever experienced”
My company has been using InData for 4 years and I’ve been very impressed. The software does what is expected and anytime we’ve had a question/concern it has been addressed. Your customer service is, hands down, the best I have ever experienced in the software industry. It is a pleasure to work with you and your software. Thanks.
Feel free to publish part of this email but please keep our company name anonymous. We want to avoid giving too much info to the competition. 😉
—JP Fulton
“InData was the software of choice”
Here is a compliment to you: please be advised that Em Software InData was the software of choice in comparison with e.g., [competitor] and [competitor], from our evaluation. This was due to the ease of use as well as the possibilities!
—Johan H.
“saved hours of time placing and formatting text for a catalog”
I have used your product [InData] in the past and think it is GREAT! Saved hours of time placing and formatting text for a catalog.
—Maria R.
“thanks again for a great set of products”
Thanks again for a GREAT set of products! I’ve been basically making my living with Xdata/InData and Xcatalog for the last 12 years.
—Ken L.
“I cannot say enough about these tools”
My first encounter with Em Software was with the Xdata plug-in back in 1996. I was working for an advertising agency at the time and was seeking for a solution for a new client. So any leverage to win them was a plus. I discovered after a site visit that they were using a paper system to produce product labels. The client did not have a product database and the labels were hand set each time.
After extensive research online I came across Xdata, the automated solution for QuarkXPress. Now, what I was using the plug-in for was not mentioned in any of the documentation. Being the pioneer that I am I tried to make it work. And to my surprise it did. The results were astonishing. I created a push button tool to create product labels complete with CMYK colors, bar codes, symbols and product data. We won the client over and it was simple enough that anyone in the organization could use it.
Then a major opportunity for another project came up. Can we create a business card solution for our client that has over 10,000 employees? A similar idea as the label solution. This client learned during the process that their data structure was screwy. Final result—solved the database issues and created a streamline system for Human Resources.
I was really getting into to this plug-in to the degree I decided to go out on my own as a consultant. In 1998 I took on a business partner and we were on a roll.
After a very convincing sales pitch to a chemical reagents company, we were awarded several catalog projects. My client’s team was amazing surprised how much time they were saving over a course of two years.
Later on formed another company Designismylife in 2000, to provide automated print solutions to many design businesses, manufacturers and marketing departments.
Em Software’s plug-ins have been a part of my design career for which I am very grateful. Chris Ryland is a business genius and of course his team of experts. I cannot say enough about these tools. They have given me the freedom to pitch to clients with confidence that I have a solution right from the start. I still see redundant tasks eating away at designer’s creativity.
If I could say, there is only one problem, the product works so well that it intimidates people. I have been asked several times during presentations ‘what will happen to our design team.’
I simply reply, “They will now have the time to design with passion.”
—David M Bey, Creative Director, designismylife™
“it worked beautifully”
I bought InData several months ago to use for helping to turn a database into a book. It took us a while to figure it all out, but we did, and it worked beautifully! Thanks for a great program.
—Colleen B.
“has already saved us the cost of the software many times over”
I bought InData for my company two years ago. It has already saved us the cost of the software many times over in the working hours spent completing projects. Our last full company directory took 4 months to complete using a well-known word processing product. This year I am at a draft stage after just a working week on the project.
But I really wanted to thank and commend you on your support. On a number of occasions I have looked for help sorting out a prototype. Your response has always been quick, efficient and comprehensive. I was particularly grateful for the recent assistance I received on what for me was a tricky/complicated issue, which was sorted through a short number of email exchanges with your excellent support department. Thanks so much.
—Nick Clarke, Diocesan Communications Director, St Edmundsbury & Ipswich
“support is on par with the products’ quality”
First, I want to say that your products [InData, InCatalog] are really awesome. 🙂
And now I discover that the support/bug correction is on par with the products’ quality. Thanks for your work.
—Vincent P.
“now I see what they were talking about”
Wow, that’s awesome. […]
You posted raving reviews of your customer service on your website, but I didn’t really pay attention to them… now I see what they were talking about.
Thanks so much for your help. I finished this project this morning, and the combination of your great software and great support made it easy and fast.
—David L.
“I have to tell you that it never gets old”
As you know, we’ve been working with Em Software for many years now, and have implemented InCatalog, InData, and InFlow in a wide range catalog and retail advertising environments.
We’re currently in the prototyping stage of an ad planning/ad production integration project with a national retail-advertising customer that involves a component of automated data linking and page building.
Creative use of a combination of InCatalog and Adobe’s XML tagging functions provided us with the technical components required to bridge the planning/data, and creative/layout domains, and provide overall functionality that is most often associated with and expected from expensive enterprise systems.
For our prototype, we designed an export schema from a legacy ad planning system, and merged this export with marketing content from another source, and image references from yet another repository, with an online tool we designed for the project. From a test export of an actual ad event, we built a 150-page indexed InDesign document with 700+ fully populated, fully formatted, ready-to-use product groups, including regional versioning output, in less than half an hour.
Sure, this kind of thing is a day at the office for you, and for us, but I have to tell you that it NEVER gets old seeing the faces of those who typically spend weeks and months searching, gathering, re-keystroking, and tracking all of the content that is now automated directly to the page for them, upon seeing it for the first time. It drops jaws every time!
We just wanted to share this with you, and thank you for the great work, and support back at Em Software. We’re glad to be your consulting/integration partner, and look forward to many more of these experiences in the future.
—Jeff Kazanow, Partner, Onus LLC
“we must have generated almost a million dollars of work”
We were one of your first users with Xdata. … We must have generated almost a million dollars of work with it. It’s nice to have some jobs where we can use it again. Thanks!
—Glenn N.
“before using Xdata, the directory would take weeks to lay out”
I use Xdata once a year to produce a directory of churches from a Filemaker database. Before using Xdata the directory would take weeks to lay out. Using Xdata to do all the donkey work I can get the directory done in a few hours. It does NOT, however, help with getting the data right in the first place. 😉 Even though it’s used only once a year, and even if it had to be upgraded every year the amount of time saved more than compensates for the costs involved.
—Dr Digby L. James, Quinta Press
“letting my friends know about your wonderful product and service”
I just wanted to echo Nancy’s previous message of thanks. I had a good feeling about your products and company when I was doing the evaluation, and now that I’ve turned over the implementation to Nancy, I continue to be very pleased with your great service.
Keep up the good work. I’ve been letting my friends know about your wonderful product and service, and would be pleased to be a reference for InData if the need ever arises.
Thank you.
—Eric J. Weiner, Publisher, Information Publications, Inc.
“saved us at least $100K in rollout costs”
Xdata has been a life saver for me and my employer, Con-Way Central Express. Shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001, Con-Way instituted a policy that required photo IDs for every permanent and supplemental employee, regardless of whether they called on customers. With roughly 9,000 employees (scattered across 25 states and 9 provinces), coming up with an economical and timely solution was a must. . . Had it been necessary for me to key the preliminary data in as well as manually import the images, the project would have failed miserably. Xdata allowed us to process as many cards a day as we could. This solution ultimately saved us at least $100,000 in rollout costs compared to using a traditional badge system and has saved countless hours of work due to automation. I can’t stress enough that Xdata has paid for itself time and again in the last two and a half years.
—Tara Keezer, Con-Way Central Express
“Xdata is wonderful”
By the way, Xdata is wonderful for a large portion of our business. We do automated production of lodging directories for several major hotel chains—ranging from simple name & phone number versions to ones with photos and maps, all pulling from the same data source. It’s a great tool!
—Matt L.
“Xdata is one of the world’s great bargains”
Six years ago I stumbled across Xdata, which was then in version 2.5. Since then I’ve sold over a million dollars in products using Xdata to make them. In the last six years I’ve made tens of thousands of pages of documents using Xdata, and no matter how complicated I make them, it runs flawlessly, every time. “This is never going to work,” I say to myself. Then I click on the buttons, and Xdata runs so fast it’s amazing.
Best of all, it’s not that hard to do. I’m no techie, just a liberal arts major from a state university. If I can use this software, anyone can use it. At $400 Xdata is one of the world’s great bargains.
–William L. Spencer
“have used Xdata for years and years”
I really have used Xdata for years and years. Apart from countless directories and books here and there, for the last 6 years or more, The Haymarket Publishing small, annual, pocket directories for Autosport, CAT and Classic & Sportscar have all been done by me using Xdata.
—Peter W.
“it [Xdata] works!”
I would like to express my personal satisfaction with the Xdata product. IT WORKS! In these days of hacks and slack code in the software industry, it’s really nice to work with software that does what it says it does. Thank you for making such an excellent product!
—Max D.
“Xdata is my choice by quite a margin”
On a completely different subject, I am curious why Xdata isn’t reviewed by the people who are writing articles about variable data printing software. I have used two other applications and have demoed some others and Xdata is my choice by quite a margin. I guess the lack of a slick GUI makes these people think Xdata isn’t up to the others but the fact that I can code what I want is what makes Xdata so attractive, and useful, to me. When I read these articles that don’t even mention Xdata in passing (!) I feel a little smug that someone looking at getting into competition with me may not know about the best application for creating variable data and will spend more time and money than I do working with something other than Xdata.
Keep up the good work.
—John Roberds, Odyssey Digital Printing
“fantastic product (Xdata)”
By the way, fantastic product (Xdata)—we recently used it to great effect to produce The Good Birth Guide for The Sunday Times [UK] Magazine-—huge success.
—Simon Regan-Edwards, Sunday Times Magazine
“my boss and I nearly fell on the floor”
It used to take us a day or more just to import our data (26,000 records, about 350 pages when done), and then a week to clean it up. When Xdata imported it in about 10 minutes with almost no cleanup needed, my boss and I nearly fell on the floor! We are so glad we went with Xdata rather than a custom software solution costing tens of thousands more.
—Andrew MacBride, Mallinckrodt Baker, Inc.
(disclosure: we hired Andy soon thereafter)
“every page flawless”
Over the past three days I’ve run and printed a 1400-record, duplex InData import. Because I also have to print them, I ran the whole thing in batches of 200 records. There are four paragraphs of variable data coming in, so it’s a fairly straightforward project. … Every page flawless. What a great product.
—David Earls
“I have to tell you how much I love Xdata”
This is probably a ‘sad’ thing to email, but I have to tell you how much I love Xdata. Anything that arrives at our office in Excel to be formatted, I jump on. Everyone thinks I’m mad, but the feeling of watching all that cruddy data flowing in, in the correct case, with headings, lots of fiddly ifs and loops working, is wonderful!
—Emma G.
“Xdata will save us 20+ man-hours a month”
Your software is easily the most appreciated thing to appear in our office on the practical work front for a long time. We’ve been hand formatting massive amounts of text for the last five and a half years. Xdata will probably save us 20+ man-hours a month, and that’s just time, it doesn’t include the frustration and boredom factors!
I thought originally that $400 was expensive for just an extension. Then I wrote a simple prototype and watched seven hundred records format themselves in under a minute—it used to take 1.5 days by hand, and I realized it was the best $400 I’d spent this year. It’s definitely whizzy for us!
—Simon D.
“went above and beyond common support”
I don’t know where to begin with the thanks.
The information you sent on the ‘corrupt’ file and the solution to that problem helped in ways I cannot mention. With this solution, I have been able to import the Xtagged data with a new prototype and mass produce the pages for the project in a matter of minutes and that is exactly why we purchased your software.
Many thanks to everyone who helped and went above and beyond common support to this problem and others.
—Robert P.
“totally impressed with the software and documentation”
I have to say that for the money this is so far an amazing application [Xdata]. Having done documentation and packaging design for a startup company (we did photoshop masking plug-ins) I have to say I am totally impressed with the software and documentation. Also, people that I have talked to (even [competitor] people) have mentioned your name and spoken very highly of you. Thanks again.
—Jason V.
“there is such a thing as superb products”
[responding in a forum]
IMHO you’ve never used Em Software[‘s products] or you wouldn’t call it a commercial. I’ve used Xdata for years and anyone who has (that includes every major publisher in this country) will tell you the same thing. There is such a thing as superb products and there is nothing wrong with sharing success stories with others.
As they say in the infomercials, no one was paid for these endorsements!
—Mike Gifford, MacWiz
“your Xdata is absolutely great”
Beside this little problem i’d like to tell you, that your Xdata is absolutely great. I can import data out of a browser-based database-application for publishing events on the web. Many newspapers in Switzerland are building their daily or weekly (or both) event-calendar with this solution and therefore with your XTension.
—Stefan B.
“hats off to you and thanks for saving oooodles of my time”
Thank you so much!
I think you’ve given me great solutions to all my problems and I can’t thank you enough. You all have been very helpful and I can’t believe how quickly you got back to me! I believe you have covered everything!
This really says a lot for your company, and even though I always thought Xdata was a great product, I now think it comes from a great company and group of people.
Hats off to you and thanks for saving oooodles of my time by coming up with these solutions!
—Anne McD.
“your promise of standing behind your products is very real”
As I’m getting to know Xdata better I’m beginning to appreciate what it can do for us and have no hesitation in recommending the package to colleagues. It is also great to know that your promise on your web site of standing behind your products is very real. Thanks again.
—Judith L.