exporting pagemaker files to database

July 26, 2005 5:12 AM

I am running in a graphics environment (pagemaker) and would like to extract the information to a database. Does anyone know of a program that can export this to a format that excel or access can use.
posted by aisleofview to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

What information do you want to extract? How structured is it? If it’s text, you can copy and paste into excel or access.
posted by signal at 6:45 AM on July 26, 2005

PageMaker is fairly limited in its capabilities. If this is something you need to do regularly, upgrade to InDesign CS or CS2. Adobe has a special upgrade package for PageMaker users. InDesign has the ability to export any InDesign file to XML, which can be easily dumped into Access or Excel. (It's a lot easier if you are also using the latest versions of those - 2003 - which truly support XML. But even earlier versions such as 2002 or 2000 should be able to import the XML document.)

(By the way - this isn't the only reason to upgrade to InDesign. I think if you check it out you'll be pleasantly surprised. You can get a fully-functional 30-day trial from www.adobe.com.)

If you are going to stay with PageMaker, then I think that signal is right - you're only hope is to copy and paste the text, one frame at a time, into the DB.
posted by robhuddles at 7:22 AM on July 26, 2005

Response by poster: I am a business card manufacturer and would like to keep all the info on the card in a database seperated by zip code occupation, etc. Cutting and pasting would be way too much work as I have about 50,000 from this year alone.
posted by aisleofview at 8:28 AM on July 26, 2005