I’m doing a huge project transferring the dimensions of documents typed in InDesign onto an Excel spreadsheet for use in a database. (Don’t ask.) It’s a mess and can’t be automated.
Some schlub (me) has to sit at the machine and individually highlight the dimensions for the bleed for the document, copy it, switch to Excel, and then paste. Then switch back to ID, highlight the trim dimension, copy it, switch to Excel, tab to the new cell, and then paste.
It’s been awful. I do as much keyboarding as I can, but I still have to manually highlight the text.
With only about 20% to go, I thought I’d try something daring. I turned on the Preference in Type for Drag and Drop text in the Layout mode.
I then highlight the text in InDesign and just drag it over to the cell in Excel. I highlight appears over the cell. I release the mouse.
The text appears in the cell, but I’m still in InDesign. It saves me 4 or 5 steps!
I actually had an out loud OMG moment. (The cat woke up to look at me.)
Again, OMG!
This article was last modified on December 21, 2021
This article was first published on October 1, 2012
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