EasyCatalog support and assistance
An EasyCatalog project rarely gets stuck on the plug-in itself. It gets stuck on an edge case no one had anticipated, on an export whose shape has changed, or on a document built two years ago that no one knows how to update any more. Support consists of resolving these situations, in production, without rewriting the whole project.
The most common situations
The document no longer updates as expected
Some records do not move, others get duplicated, some disappear. In the vast majority of cases, the problem is the identifier: it changed between two deliveries, or it was never truly unique. That is where the diagnosis starts.
The new delivery no longer has the same structure
Columns renamed, added, removed, reordered. The document is fine but it no longer recognises its source. The exact differences need to be identified precisely, then a decision made about what to reconnect and what to drop.
The formatting fails in certain cases
An empty field that leaves orphaned punctuation, an overlong text that overflows, a pictogram that must appear only under a certain condition. These cases can be handled, but they require the rule to be set at the right point in the chain.
A legacy project, with no documentation
The person who built it is no longer there. The document's logic has to be reconstructed before it can be modified without breaking what works. It is a job of analysis more than of execution.
Before calling: if the blockage takes the form of a message displayed by EasyCatalog, the page EasyCatalog error messages (in French) gives, for the most frequent ones, what the message states, the move that clears it and the trap that brings it back.
How it works
The rule is to start by seeing the problem rather than discussing it. A remote session, on a shared screen, is enough to handle the majority of one-off blockages: we look at the file, we look at the document, we isolate the cause. When the matter goes beyond the incident — a complete overhaul of a project, scaling up, setting up a workflow for several operators — an on-site intervention or end-to-end support is more effective.
In every case, the approach is the same: go back to the cause instead of treating the symptom. Manually correcting the twenty incorrect records on page 12 saves an hour and costs twice as much at the next delivery.
What it covers
Assistance covers the entire data publishing chain: catalogues, directories, brochures, leaflets, product sheets, labels. In practice, that ranges from a blockage on a master page or a panel to the full launch of a project, including taking over an existing one and preparing an uncooperative data source.
Having a project validated before producing
There is one particularly profitable moment to bring in an outside eye: just before launching actual production, when the structure is in place but nothing is committed yet. Project validation consists of reviewing the data structure, the master pages, the panels, the links and the behaviour under load, and flagging what will hold up poorly once volume and corrections arrive.
Why before rather than after
A structural error spotted on a demonstration project is corrected in one session. The same error spotted three days before final sign-off, on eight hundred records already paginated and proofread, is paid for in overtime and printing risk. The cost gap between those two moments is the best argument for project validation.
To request a validation: contact@easy-catalog.fr.
Before you call: what saves time
Two reflexes speed up the diagnosis considerably. First, run the data file through the free online assistant: if the problem comes from the source, the report shows it immediately and the discussion starts from facts. Second, be able to say what has changed since the last time everything worked — a new delivery, an InDesign update, a change of workstation, a new colleague. A problem that “appears out of nowhere” almost always has a cause that can be dated.
Contact us
By email: contact@easy-catalog.fr. By phone: 06 01 79 83 77. The terms of intervention are detailed at agence-margaret.fr/support-easycatalog. For a problem attributable to the plug-in itself — a functional anomaly, a version incompatibility — the publisher 65bit Software maintains a knowledge base and provides its own technical support.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need to have taken a training course to request support?
No. Support is aimed just as much at an autonomous team facing an unusual case as at someone taking over a project built by somebody else. These are two distinct needs: training passes on a method, support resolves a situation.
Do you work remotely or on site?
Both. Remotely via screen sharing for one-off blocking issues, which is the quickest to arrange. On site when several people need to be brought on board, a complete workflow needs auditing, or the work involves an environment that cannot leave the company.
My problem may come from my Excel file — is that within scope?
Yes, and it very often is. An EasyCatalog document that misbehaves usually reveals a flaw in the source: non-unique identifiers, merged cells, formulas that have not been frozen, columns repeated for each variation. Preparing the data is an integral part of the job.
Can you take over a project built by someone else?
Yes. It starts with an analysis phase to reconstruct the document's logic before making any changes. That time may seem unproductive, but it avoids breaking what still works.
What is the difference between 65bit's support and yours?
65bit Software is responsible for its product: functional defects, version compatibility, fixes. The assistance offered here concerns your project: the structure of your data, the design of your templates, your production method, taking over existing work. These are questions a software publisher cannot answer, since they depend on your context.