Is there a way InDesign will remember what data you’re pulling from Excel if you add/remove rows/columns? Relative/Absolute references?
Background: I’m working on a project to hopefully reduce human error by linking specs from Excel to an INDD file. The Excel document and InDesign file don’t have the same cell order, and not all data is used.
First Method: I tried several avenues including creating a secondary sheet that linked to Excel then linked the secondary sheet to InDesign. That only worked if I placed it as formatted, but I wanted unformatted to be able to automatically apply my table style. Unfortunately, placing unformatted brings all the data in with -1 as the values. Placing formatted brings in the proper values, but would take several steps to style. Additionally, the link doesn’t say it needs updated until the secondary sheet is opened and resaved to populate the new data.
Second Method: Placing data cell-by-cell in frames the size of the cell as an anchored object in a table. This works pretty well but is tedious. The copy comes in with the right text formatting, and I don’t have to remove table strokes, etc. The caveat being the data doesn’t remember the cell if rows/columns are deleted—making this useless as it needs to be able to handle that.
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