Variable data flow

[LasseThid]

The SmartStream plugin is installed on the Switch Server?

Yes, I've been working from InDesign on the Switch Server

Is the license set up properly?

Yes, other SmartStream flows works correctly

Save the csv as a txt and try it again?

OK, will give it a try

I would also triple-check the template path in the configurator settings.

Done that as I've tried a couple of different locations for the template folder.

Do you have the Switch/Smartstream on the same computer as then you make the the test that all is OK?

Yes

The total search-way on the computer, no extended characters?

No extended characters in the file path. Full folder path is: Enfocus Switch Developer/Macintosh HD/Users/switchdeveloper/Documents/VDP_Templates

The computer is set to english as preferred language and I use english terminology for everything in case I need Enfocus technicians to connect to the computer for troubleshooting...

[LasseThid]

Once again, U DA MAN Gabriel!

I saved the .csv file as a text file and everything worked perfectly.

Thanks. Any ideas as to what might be the problem with the .csv that I can have the customer change?

[gabrielp]

Once again, U DA MAN Gabriel!

I saved the .csv file as a text file and everything worked perfectly.

Thanks. Any ideas as to what might be the problem with the .csv that I can have the customer change?

Haha.. thanks man.

Well, someone at HP told someone at my company (forget who) that CSV files had to be encoded as UTF-16 Unicode. I don't remember the context of the conversation but saving it as UTF-16 Unicode did fix the problem the person was having.

Again, another obscure undocumented requirement alerted by a vague and useless error message. We should play an HP trivia drinking game at the next Dscoop.

[LasseThid]

Sounds like fun Gabriel, but for some reason I doubt that my employer will send me to Dscoop on the other side of the atlantic so we could have an HP trivia drinking game...

Is there a way to automatically convert csv-files to UTF-16 text files?
I tried being creative and put a Rename job in the flow where I first removed the extension and then added txt as extension, but that didn't work so I put an Execute command in after Rename job with iconv -t UTF-16 as command and Updated input job as Output, but that didn't work either. Using iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-16 doesn't work either.

[LasseThid]

What the heck... the flow isn't working any more?

I even tried to rebuild the flow and I can't get it to work...

[gabrielp]

What the heck... the flow isn't working any more?

I even tried to rebuild the flow and I can't get it to work...

What are you getting for your SmartStreamStatus log? Failing again? Try restarting InDesign. It seems to fail every now and then. I have an issue now where it times out, giving no SmartStreamStatus message and restarting it seems to fix it.

[LasseThid]

I just got off the phone with the techie who's been teaching me a little about SmartStream and it turns out it's my allergy towards using spaces in file or folder names that is causing the problem, as I use underscore instead of space. Hence my VDP_Test template wasn't recognised since SmartStream Designer VDP was looking for a template called VDP...

_, - and . are used as separators by SmartStream, so if you use them in file or folder names nothing will work as anticipated...

He instructed me to put the .hpd file straight in to my VDP_Templates folder AND to also to unzip the .hpd file in the VDP_Templates folder.

Now that I have changed the folder name, template name and csv file names to VDPTest the flow works correctly. I can now drop the csv-file in the in folder and it works perfectly, no need to convert to txt anymore.

Messages in Switch didn't say anything.