Forums | MacLife

The short anser- no.

Microsoft Office is no design application so it's allowed to break a lot of rules.

I receive Excel and Powerpoint files several times a month. The best I can do is save out of Office as a PDF or copy the whole thing to the clipboard and paste to a new doc in Illustrator. Never tried InDesign.

There is an XML import option in ID. Maybe someone else can help you with that.

You have a huge job in front of you either way. Why does this transition need to take place? And if you are unfamiliar with InDesign and Excel, why did they choose you?

To 240 pages.

Is it possible- yes. Is there a simple way for someone with little experience in either program? No.

It will not be quick or easy. Tedious at best.

I'm with Mr. Potty: Easy.

Export the Excel file as CSV, set up your styles with proper tab stops, font size, and next/previous styles, set up your template that you want to bring the text in to and use AutoFlow (look it up) to make sure your pages are automatically generated as needed.

Simple set up, just takes a little reading of the manual.

pottymouth wrote:

Long answer: Yes

Getting the text into ID is not at all a problem. Place or copy/paste or whatever works best depending on your format. You may have to find and replace out a bunch of tabs or other characters but it shouldn't be too hard to get the text close to a useable form. The goal is basically to get it to clean slate, ready to be styled.

To get it styled properly make yourself 2 paragraph styles for Bold and Regular. Once you've created the styles, go back and edit those Paragaph Styles General Settings so the Bold style's "Next style:" is set to Regular and the Regular style's "Next style:" is set to Bold.

Cmd+A (or whatever works best) to select ALL the text you want to format.

...get ready...

Ctrl+click the Regular (or bold, if that comes first) style in the Paragraph Styles palette and choose: "Apply 'Regular' then Next Style"

Done.

Hey guys sorry it took me so long to get back here, but I've been busting my butt getting all the ads done for our book. Thanks for the tips, I will try them. I've taught myself how to set up the master pages, the auto flow and paragraph styles. The problem is that they are not paragraphs, just single lines. So basically, I have to still go in and select the first line and make it that style, then the 2nd and make it that style. However, the best I've been able to get it imported into In Design is everything as Arial Narrow 7 pt, with tabs intact, but I still have to manually go in and delete all the unnecessary tabs and then make the first line bold and 10 point. The problem is that there is 5,000+ listings I have to format. In a nutshell is there any way I can set it up to automatically import text so it imports like this:

Blah, blah blah............................000-000-0000 (Arial Narrow, Bold, 10 pt.)
blah, blah, blah, blah (Arial Narrow 7 pt.)
Blah, blah blah............................000-000-0000 (Arial Narrow, Bold, 10 pt.)
blah, blah, blah, blah (Arial Narrow 7 pt.)

I'm pretty sure an Applescript could do this, but I am completely unfamiliar with those, but damn, it just seems like there HAS to be an easier way. I've done a little looking into the XML thing myself, but it seems complex. Perhaps it isn't?

Last edited by flounder2 (2008-04-10 8:53 pm)

flounder2 wrote:

zoees wrote:

And if you are unfamiliar with InDesign and Excel, why did they choose you?

I'm not unfamiliar with In Design, but I really only know it from a Graphic Design standpoint, not that it really has anything to do with the question or solving the problem, nor is it even really any of your business. Come on man, I'm just trying to find an easier way to do VERY tedious task.

Dude- it was a legit question, more for my own edification. I receive a lot of "art" and "designs" from people and it amazes me sometimes what these peoples actual professions and backgrounds are. In a nutshell, I was curious. Pardon me.

Yes it's a tedious task. I have learned a few pointers from you asking this question, thank you.

Good luck.

As can I, but sometimes I wonder if we're all just complaining about each other when we think we're relating.

If the excel file is set up perfectly you could map it's styles to your document styles in the import options dialog. But it has to be perfect (and predictable). Unfortunately I've never met an author/editor who could even grasp the basics of how to properly use styles in MS Office programs and, being an InDesign user, I've always found it easier to just clean up their manuscript after it's been imported.

Does it have to be tabbed? Maybe giving that 1st line paragraph style a left indent is the easier solution?

might this work?

Find and replace ^p with ^p^t then find and replace ^t^t with ^t.

This will add a tab to the beginning of every line (and probly also hose your formatting...be careful) and then take out that extra tab from the beginning of every line that already had one.



Smithwicks, please!

That didn't work. It adds a tab to the beginning of each line.

Basically they way I need it to be set up is like so:
NAME (tab).................................................PHONE (10 pt bold)
ADRESS (7 pt reg.)

So the tab needs to be in between the name and phone in the first line only.

P.S. Scratch that, I was able to make it work. I had them set up the Excel file with *** between the first and second line. Then just did a Find/Replace for *** and replaced it with ^t. I haven't looked through the entire list, but the first 50 or so pages look good.

Last edited by flounder2 (2008-05-05 5:25 pm)