How did my Graphic Designer do this with Excel into InDesign?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
March 15, 2018
3 replies
851 views

I need help, advice. I have a client that uses Excl. I thought I could make a pdf of the file and be good to go placing in InDesign.

They want more. Previously my Graphic Designer had formatted type and placed underscored rules that Excel can't do.

I have attached a screen shot.

Does anyone have suggestions - I am on a deadline.

How did he do this?

This topic has been closed for replies.

jane-e

Community Expert

kdprinter wrote
Previously my Graphic Designer had formatted type and placed underscored rules that Excel can't do.
How did he do this?

Q: How did he do this?

A: Badly

Using three frames with multiple tabs is not efficient or a best practice. Better would have be either a table in InDesign or a linked table from Excel. If it were a table in InDesign or Excel, the lines could be attached to the bottom of a cell. He spent much more time formatting it this way than if he had done it efficiently, and I hope you aren't paying by the hour.

How did you lose the work? Can it be recovered? Can we help with that?

kdprinterAuthor

Participating Frequently

I apologize not being clear on what I mean as rules.

I mean double lines - under totals.

Client wants those move up closer to the number itself

S

SJRiegel

Legend

kdprinter wrote
I mean double lines - under totals.
Client wants those move up closer to the number itself

This could be easily achieved using an InDesign table with the text aligned to the bottom of the cells, with the lower cell padding reduced. (highlighted cell to show the settings, other one to show the result)

hammer0909

Community Expert

It's hard to tell from your screen shot. They could have used a Rule Below as Laubender has said. You'll find this by clicking in the text and pressing ctrl+alt+J (Windows) or Cmd+Option+J (Mac). They could have also achieved this using the underline format. Select the text and look in your character formatting to see if the underline button is enabled. If it is, option/alt click on the button to see the properties.