Expert: James Fritz - 2/23/2010

Question
Hi - I need to link excel charts to InDesign so that they update when the excel files are updated (just charts not tables) - I've hunted but can not see a way of doing this - do you know if there is a way? I used to be able to do this in Pagemaker using the paste special/link and I can also do this in Quark. Thank you for your help.

Answer
Yvonne,

Inside InDesigns preferences (under file handling ) you can choose to create a link when placing text and spreadsheets (excel files).

When you place a new excel file it will now come in as a link. Just be aware that any change you make to the excel file in your layout (resizing cells or manually changing the format of text) will go away when you update an out of date excel file. You will need to use cell and table styles to format your table (if you intend to format the table inside ID)