Date countdown in indesign

sarajeffery

New Member
Hi, I am creating a calendar for a couple who are getting married this year - so I would like to have a countdown of the days leading up to the wedding date. But I would also like to use this again for other couples in the future, so is there a straight forward/quick way to be able to do this without doing it manually?



I've tried having a play around with data merge but haven't used it before so not sure how to work it or if there is a better option?



Thanks in advance!
 
A working fully functioning countdown?
Or just a countdown style?

Not really sure what you're trying to do - any examples?
 
I can’t find any examples, hence why it is something I would like to pursue.

It will be a printed calendar so each date from the 1st Jan will have how many days it is until the wedding date. Does that make sense?
 
Sorry completely forgot about it.

I had a look at it alright - the way you have it setup isn't practical for what I had in mind.

You have all the dates inserted in text frames and all the lines individually drawn.

  1. Start with January - insert a table of 5 rows x 7 columns.
  2. Set up a paragraph style that has auto numbering enabled.
  3. Insert the days of the week on the top row
  4. Insert a blank return into each cell with the day starting January, which is a Saturday
  5. When you get to 31 that's January finished.
  6. Copy and paste that text frame, then change the month to February, starts Tuesday and ends on 28 Monday.
  7. Just add or remove returns so that the autonumbering adds the correct date.
  8. Then continue like that.
  9. It couldn't be easier. You'd have it done in about 5 minutes.
  10. It's just a matter of styling the tables and figuring out the spacing etc.

I wrote this tutorial 10 years ago.
So you might want to adjust the table or split the rows so that you can insert dates into them the way you have.
Play with the tables first to get them the way you want.

After that - it should be a straight forward to insert the countdown.
 
Hi there, apologies I am a bit new to all this but please see attached:

- I have done the paragraph style as you said, however this doesn't work for May, August (not sure if there's a way round this?)
- I need to properly format it all so don't worry if it looks weird
- Is there a way to get the number bottom right of the box?

Thank you for this, its a massive help - their wedding is 13th June.
 
Ok to get closer to your original

So you are still drawing in lines manually - if you select your table cell - and then go to Table>Split Horizontally - it splits in two.

I saved an InDesign Snippet here - drag this into InDesign it shows the example for May.



You will see the last cell is split into 2 - and the automatic numbering continues.

I took off the outside border - and set the inner borders to .5pt - a bit cleaner.
 
Ok this is the way I did August

Same thing again - August starts on Sunday, ends on Tuesday
Split 23 and 24 horizontally - and then added the numbering.


Screenshot 2021-02-16 at 15.42.59.png
 
I had a script for this but it's not working in the latest version of InDesign.
And the person who created it has passed away.

I've tried seeing if I can find someone to fix it - but I can't find anyone.
 
Unfortunately it's a manual process from here.
But the table structure will make it easy to make changes to dates and years as you go on.
 
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