Bullet point styling InDesign when linked from Excel

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 3, 2025
4 replies
684 views

I have an ID document where the content (copy) is fed from Excel via a placed link. The issue I'm having is that the bulleted copy aligns with the bullet point, even when the copy goes to two lines, rather than aligning neatly with the first line of copy.

The attached screenshot shows how messy the bullet points look now. I have tried adjusting the paragraph styles, but I'm unsure if there is a rule to indent second and subsequent lines of copy in a paragraph.

Type

Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

Put simply, you indent the whole paragraph as far as you want the text to be, then "outdent" or negative-indent the first line to place the bullet where you want it. That's not completely different from, say, Word, but that negative spacing can be a confusing concept.

You also can't create bulleted/numbered paragraphs in ID with a menu click, as in Word. (Well... you sort of can, there is a button on the Control Bar for it, but you really have to assign and define a Paragraph Style bullet/numbered formatting in the style menu.)

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Don't apply any formatting in Excel--remove it when placing.

The formatting goes in this order:

Paragraph Styles > Cell Styles* > Table Styles.

*Sometimes I create cell styles with no other formatting simply to auto-apply the paragraph styles.

That bullet list would be formatting in the paragraph style.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Barb Binder

Community Expert

HI @Rita26663624dfvl:

It looks like the bullet came in with the excel content, followed by a space?

Two options:

Change the space to a tab and create a hanging indent as per @Willi Adelberger: set a left indent and a negative first line indent.
Create a bullet paragraph style and use Find/Change to first locate all bullets followed by a space and assign the paragraph style, then Find/Change a second time to remove the bullets and the space. (This is more complicated for a new user and I know it's fast in the screen recording because of time/file size forum limitations), but the fastest if you have a lot of these to deal with.)

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training

Scott Falkner

Community Expert

3. insert an Indent to Here character after the bullet space. Use Find/Change to do this…

Find what: ^8

(There’s a space after the 8)

Change to: ^8 ^i

If you want to make more space after the bullet add another space or use a N-space (^>) or M-space(^m).

James Gifford—NitroPressCorrect answer

Legend

Put simply, you indent the whole paragraph as far as you want the text to be, then "outdent" or negative-indent the first line to place the bullet where you want it. That's not completely different from, say, Word, but that negative spacing can be a confusing concept.

You also can't create bulleted/numbered paragraphs in ID with a menu click, as in Word. (Well... you sort of can, there is a button on the Control Bar for it, but you really have to assign and define a Paragraph Style bullet/numbered formatting in the style menu.)