The DesignMerge Tag Converter Utility allows you to convert DesignMerge variable text links in an InDesign document to MPS Tagged Text. Additionally, this utility allows you to convert MPS Tagged Text representing DesignMerge variable text links in an InDesign document back into actual DesignMerge variable text links.

Use this utility to preserve DesignMerge information that has been assigned to text when a document must be converted to a format that does not support DesignMerge Links, such as the Adobe InDesign interchange markup format (IDML). For example, you may need to open the document in an earlier version of InDesign. In order to do this, the document must first be converted to the IDML format.

To convert variable text links to MPS Tagged Text, open the DesignMerge menu and select Utilities > Link > Convert Placeholders to Tagged Text. All of the variable text links in the document will be replaced with text that is in an MPS Tagged Text format. Next, use the InDesign Save command to save the document in the InDesign interchange markup format (IDML). You then can open the resulting IDML file in an earlier version of InDesign. When editing a document that contains text in the MPS Tagged Text format, do not edit the tagged text. 

To convert MPS Tagged Text to variable text links, open the DesignMerge menu and select Utilities > Link > Convert Tagged Text to Placeholders. All of the MPS Tagged Text representing variable text links in the document will be replaced by actual DesignMerge variable text links. You can then save the document in the InDesign document format (INDD).

NOTE: The DesignMerge Tag Converter Utility converts only variable text links. Variable picture links, variable text frame links, frame rule assignments, and page rule assignments will not be converted. If your original InDesign document includes any of these other types of DesignMerge variables, once the placeholders have been converted to MPS Tagged Text and the document has been exported to the IDML format, when you open the resulting IDML file and use the Tag Converter Utility to convert MPS Tagged Text to placeholders, the variable text links will be returned but you will have to re-assign picture links, text frame links, frame rules, and page rules.