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• • September 12, 2024 at 2:43 am #14406337
    Elisabeth Straumoey

    Member

    I have set up a quarterly report in InDesign with tables that are linked to Excel, and I will shortly be helping the same client with an annual report.

    However, now I am told that the Excel document was «too heavy» in the quarterly report, meaning that it took several minutes to update a single table in InDesign after changes were made in Excel. There will be a significantly larger amount of data for the annual report.

    For the quarterly report the problem was «solved» by removing the «links»/calculations from the Excel tabs which were not used in the tables themselves, but functioned as the basis for the numbers. This was done in a separate version of the Excel document. Linking this lighter Excel document to InDesign enabled quick updates in InDesign whenever changed were made in Excel.

    However, this «solution» also meant that the finance department needed to perform every operation twice – in their main, heavy Excel document + in the separate version with less tabs.

    This of course increases the risk of errors and is also time consuming.

    Could we somehow have the best of both worlds, with one complete Excel version that does not bog down updates in InDesign?

  • September 12, 2024 at 8:43 am #14406345
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Just reading this give me a stomach ache… While technically InDesign can “link” to Excel files, I’m just not sure how far I trust it — especially for huge Excel files. There are so many challenges when using linked Excel files, but the biggest one is that every change you make in InDesign is removed/deleted/forgotten when you click Update.

    That said, if you have to do this, I wonder if using WordsFlow Pro from EmSoftware.com would be more reliable?

  • September 12, 2024 at 8:56 am #14406346
    KAREN SALSBURY

    Participant

    I recently used formatted Excel files for a huge catalog project. Because of style challenges, I downgraded to unformatted Excel files. And ultimately that didn’t work well enough either. So I ended up (gasp) having to copy and paste. Which yes took forever, but gave me the control I needed. So I feel your pain. The InDesign folks really need to work on this feature.

    Also, I wanted to share this with you from the WordsFlow website:

    Pro works with Excel (one-way)
    The Pro version of WordsFlow also works with imported Excel spreadsheet files as well as Word files. You can place a spreadsheet file, then format columns/rows or individual cells, etc. in InDesign. Later, if you or someone else makes changes to the original spreadsheet, including moving around rows or columns, WordsFlow will figure out what changed, and merge in the changes without losing the formatting and edits you’ve made in InDesign.

    WordsFlow Pro doesn’t support two-way workflow with Excel documents, for now. But we call it a “one and a half-way workflow,” since you can work on both sides simultaneously.

    • September 12, 2024 at 2:38 pm #14406370
      Andrew

      Member

      Sometimes, you’d have to copy-paste just to get the control you want, and that’s just so very tedious on big jobs. This could be a real problem when Excel and InDesign are not in the best of terms with each other, leaving you doing stuff manually that you thought would have been automated. Been there; that is an enormous amount of time wasted.

      Anyway, WordsFlow Pro can save your life, especially when you’re working with Excel files. Admittedly, the “one and a half-way workflow” that it offers is not perfect, but the fact that it allows you to update your content in Excel while maintaining your InDesign formatting is huge. You can still format the cells and columns in InDesign without having to really be concerned that all of your hard work could get lost in updates. This is not a full two-way sync yet, but even this one-way update feature saves so much time compared to manual adjustments. Definitely worth checking out for future projects, especially if you manage large catalogs such as this one.

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