Text Inset vs. Variable Question (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Fred Ridder]

Maeli Zacchetti wrote:
 

On previous projects I’ve used ~20 part name variables (created in a master file, then applied to each *.fm file through a book update) and then inserted that part’s variable any time I need to use the part name.  For this project with
 100+ parts it seems like that could start getting painful, just in terms of scrolling through a massive variable list.
 
I was thinking that I could use text insets as another option, if it were possible to import from a single cell in a table (e.g. excel file). That would let me use the spreadsheet that I’d have to create anyway for planning out the variables
 (and internal tracking of what name I’m assigning to a given part number).  

 
In the past I’ve used text insets to reference repeated short paragraphs, using a series of individual text documents to hold each paragraph. So I guess I could do the same thing again, but then I’d end up with 100+ text files, which seems
 like a different kind of inconvenient compared to the 100+ variables.
 It's not necessary to use one file per inset. Text insets import a text *flow*, not the whole file (even if your files have only one flow, you still have to select that flow when you're inserting an inset). What you can have is a series of files that have multiple, named flows in them. At least this way you're able to break the hundreds of variables down into a 2-level hierarchy so that you could avoid having either level's selection list longer than 15 (up to 225 discrete insets) to 20 (up to 400) choices. 

-Fred Ridder

 		 	   		  
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