I had the same problem: I received an excel table from my client, but I don’t have excel, so I made necessary changes using google sheets. InDesign does not recognise the google sheet file, even if I save it as excel.
I solved this by opening the google sheets file in Numbers (I’m on Mac…) and re-exporting it as excel from there, using the Advanced option to save as .xls (Excel 1997-2004 compatible).

I’m not sure I understand your problem correctly, but as far as I can tell, this is what I would do: in your illustrator file, place your cut contour paths in a separate layer. Then on InDesign, right click on your placed image and select “Object Layer Options” and turn off the cut contour layer.

It was a different video, one with a Tiger.. but it’s this technique :) Thank you for being so generous with your knowledge!

for sorting, I would first create the text of each recipe in an excel spreadsheet, order alphabetically in excel, and then use datamerge to generate the designs.

Use data merge!

Use Paragraph Rules, adjust offset and weight until you get the desired thickness and position of the bar relative to the text, and in width choose Column, so it will be as wide as the text box. This will work well as long as your titles don’t span more than one line.