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Excel for InDesign Users

Bill Jelen
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InDesign Magazine issue 115This article appeared in Issue 116 of InDesign Magazine.

Amazing Excel tips that will boost your page-layout productivity

I know it seems crazy to have an article about Excel in the middle of a magazine for Adobe InDesign users, but I’m serious: Learning a bit about Excel can really improve your productivity in the process of making books, catalogs, and all kinds of other layouts.

That’s because, every so often, you have a task in InDesign that could be handled easily with the data tools in Microsoft Excel. Maybe you need to clean up a bunch of text, or a table supplied by an author. Or your client or boss gave you an Excel document and wants you to turn it into something beautiful in InDesign. Believe me, the more you know about Excel, the happier you’ll be, no matter what you do!

In this article, I will show you how to use Excel and an amazing feature called Flash Fill (which was new in Excel 2013), plus some shortcuts for selecting large data sets and ways for comparing two lists.

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Bill Jelen
Bill Jelen is the author of 57 books about Microsoft Excel, half of which he laid out himself in InDesign. Running MrExcel.com is his full-time gig. When he isn’t geeking out about Excel, you will find him and his wife Mary Ellen Jelen photographing the rocket launches at Cape Canaveral for WeReportSpace.com.
  • WB Design says:
    December 21, 2018 at 2:16 pm

    Thank you for this really really helpful article, Bill. Tips like this make it fun to use Excel.

    Reply
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