Participant

Question

Copy/paste excel table into InDesign

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
February 1, 2018
10 replies
40099 views

Hi all,

I often have to make tables in InDesign, which I copy/paste from the excel file in which the calculations are made. Until recently (I guess after the latest update of InDesign) this worked very well, but now when I copy a table from excel, it pastes all data in the same column. I added two screenshots to make it more clear. The only way around now is copy/paste column per column, which is an absolute waste of time. Anybody who knows how I can solve this problem? Many thanks in advance!

M

Monserrat31138699dlcr

Participant

I opened the excel in Google Sheets, then I can select and paste directly in Indesign, i hope it can work in your case.

J

Jeppe27002532ayuh

Participant

When I copy and paste from Excel into an existing table in InDesign, it causes an extra empty row between every existing row, which is frustrating to clean up. I found that if I copy from Excel -> Word -> InDesign, then the entire table is pasted correctly in InDesign with no extra rows/spaces.

I guess InDesign doesn't correctly interpret the data and formatting from Excel, but when copied from Word, which is an actual table, InDesign has no problem pasting it correctly.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi @Jeppe27002532ayuh ,

just a guess: perhaps every other row in the Excel table is a hidden row?

( And Word consolidates the table? )

Currently I have no Excel at hand to test this…

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

J

Jeppe27002532ayuh

Participant

Hi @Laubender

No hidden rows. It's just a simple Excel sheet.
But - I just did a test, and have discovered the problem now. If I copy from an Excel sheet that is opened in Sharepoint in the browser, then the additional empty rows are added. If I open the same document in the desktop app, then I can copy and paste just fine. So the clipboard input from Excel in the browser probably contain some additional hidden data, that InDesign then create rows for. That just a guess on my part.

J

Jon@HH&C

Inspiring

The solution for me, on Windows Excel 365 -> InDesign, was to change InDesign's clipboard handling to text only. After that, copying and pasting directly multiple rows and columns works as intended, preserving all preset styles in InDesign, without the need to use in intermediary application.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi steffenm32535037,

did you mark Nina5F88's solution as the "Correct Answer" here?

I do not think, that this answer is correct at all, because a printscreen is just an image, a bunch of pixels.

And if you paste it inside from the clipboard you even cannot tell with InDesign's functionality what effective resolution is used when scaling it. ( Unless you trigger InDesign's Preflight in a special way. )

For now I will unmark this answer as the correct one.

Of course you could convince me otherwise, but one need some very good reasons using a screen shot of an Excel table instead of an InDesign table with editable table cells.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

N

Nina5F88

Participant

Printscreen key on your keyboard.

It takes a picture of your screen and keeps it in your clipboard.

All you have to do is ctrl+v (paste) and crop it

tomrootstudio

Participant

I found a quick fix for this today guys which might be useful for you. If you paste the content from Excel or Numbers into TextEdit first (or WordPad for Windows I guess) then copy it again from there and it keeps the tabs so you can paste it into your InDesign table. I only tried this with one column so can't say for sure if it works across multiple columns. Hope this helps!

P

papacino

Participating Frequently

Worked like a dream. Pasted multiple columns and rows from Numbers into TextEdit as plain text and then copied and pasted into formatted tables in InDesign. Copy pasted perfectly respecting all the styles set-up in the InDesign file.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi Lukas,

thank you for sharing your experience.

So now you are working with Office 2016.

What's your exact OS X version?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

L

Lukas4

Participating Frequently

MacOS Catalina 10.15.1

L

Lukas4

Participating Frequently

Hey guys, my problem with copy/paste is back. It function about one week. No update system MAC, no update citrix, no update adobe cc.

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi Lukas,

yes, but I wonder if my issue and your issue shares the same reason.

Did you try the following:

Just select only one cell in your InDesign table before pasting.

On Windows 10 this is still working; just tested that.

I suspect a Mac OS X issue.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

L

Lukas4

Participating Frequently

Dear,

I solved problem. Problem was in Citrix Workspace and in version of Office. I have had version 2010. After upgrade to 2016 version is problem solved.

I think, that very big problem is in constantly new updations with Adobe CC, updations with MacOS etc.

Thanks

L

Laubender

Community Expert

Hi Lukas,

I came accross something similar weeks ago on an updated Mac OS X system.

Usually I could select some tab delimited text with InDesign, copy it to the clipboard, select one cell in Excel and paste all the contents in so that every tab delimited contents landed in its own cell. Not so with a recent version of Excel. I had to convert the text to a table in InDesign, select all cells in the table, copy to the clipboard, select one single cell in Excel and paste it.

I still can copy tab delimited text from InDesign to Excel on Windows 10 and every delimited contents is transferred to its own cell.

Maybe something changed with OS X or with the latest version of Excel on Mac OS X ?

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

L

Lukas4

Participating Frequently

Hi Uwe,

OK, I understand your case. You describe way from InDD to Excel.

But I have problem with opposite way - from Excel (or Numbers) to InDD. steffenm32535037 in first post it described - table with more collumn is pasting to InDD to one column.

Steve Werner

Community Expert

Nothing has changed in the way tables work.

But I have a hunch you may have forgotten an important point: When you're replacing cell data in an InDesign table, first select the cells that need to be replaced, then paste the exact same number of cells from Excel/Word that you're replacing them with.

S

steffenm32535037Author

Participant

Hi Steve, thanks for your reply.

I know this is how it works, I've been doing some intensive copy/pasting of tables over the last years

The excel files are on a shared server and I open them on Citrix in a Windows environment. I then copy/paste them to InDesign which is running locally on my macbook in iOS. I now found when I first copy paste the tables to a local excel file in iOS, the copy/paste works... At least this is a way around that might already save me some time!

But until recently, the copy/paste also worked directly from excels in a Citrix environment (my colleague is having the same issue). Strange but probably it has nothing to do with InDesign then.

Steve Werner

Community Expert

Yes, I don't work in those fancy server-based environments. It adds whole new ways for things to screw up!

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