I render personalised documents for my clients.
I have a template document, which is personalised for each client, based on a table with about 100 columns, so there’s many variables. The personalised items are text which can be as short as a few words, to about 500 words. There’s also personalised images.
I print them as PDF, which is the end product.
It works really fine and I love the possibilities, BUT the end result (the only thing the client sees) is far from ideal, because:
No page numbers
text blocks don’t split up, often leaving big parts of pages blank
no possibility to insert page breaks (would be a BIG DEAL!!)
In short, a way to format a page before printing/export to PDF would be a giant leap forward for me.
I see page numbers have been requested long ago, but I don’t read recent comments on that topic.
If anyone could help me with solutions, or give me a perspective on feature development in that area, it would be much appreciated!
Yes - Coda is not a PDF first product. It is primarily digital first, so you have no control over page breaks, etc
Documint is a specialized PDF generation software that has an integration with Coda - but because it is focused solely on PDF generation, you have complete control over the look and feel of the PDFs generated.
You can find documint here: → Documint. They have a free plan (10 PDFs a month and each additional $0.20) or a paid plan as well for more unlimited document generation.
The alternative is to do as you are doing - Trying to hack together something somewhat decent in Coda. Sometimes it works! I actually do that for contracts/agreements (coda generated PDF)
And here is an example PDF my team at the Coda school generates using Documint and the Coda Integration alone. We can dynamically input graphs, charts, images, text, page breaks and more all from Coda. But first yes, you must define the template on the Documint end of things
