This is shown by opening the text file in an application such as TextWrangler (the tabs show up as triangles): Unfortunately, when exported from Microsoft Excel as a tab delimited text file, Excel still treated the columns as if they did contain information. Lastly, columns F and G look like they are not in use, but at one stage they did contain data but the information was removed manually.

In this instance, column B should be removed. Similarly, column B is completely blank, but so far as InDesign is concerned, it is a field that has no field name, and just has blank records. The Surname field (D1) is missing its field name. When creating a database for a Data Merge, all of the fields in the header row MUST be named. This relates to a field name in the header row being missing. The following errors can occur when selecting (or updating) a data source: The selected data source has one or more empty field names. It’s not an exhaustive list and doesn’t go into issues that can arise when dealing across languages and alphabets, but should be enough for most users to identify the fault and prepare a solution. So today’s post covers the common error dialog boxes one might expect to find during a Data Merge and how to fix the faults. What I have noticed is the lack of resources when things do NOT go according to plan, namely troubleshooting the error dialog boxes that can pop up and leave users bewildered. See also: New Data Merge and Database Publishing Title at For those who do not use Data Merge as frequently, the help page on the Adobe website offers enough information to get started with Data Merge, and there are plenty of video tutorials online to create a basic Data Merge. Working with the Data Merge feature of Adobe InDesign is something I do often.

Indesign data merge image link path