Building a Catalog Using Data from Excel

[leee84486910]

Is it possible to use an Excel file's data to pull into a catalog in InDesign?  The catalog has multiple listings over many pages.  So pulling the complete table will not work.  Each listing would pull a line of data from the file.  The next listing would need to pull from another line of data.  Would you be able to link the location of the data in Excel within the InDesign publication?

[BobLevine]

From the description, it sounds like you could do this with a data merge.

[leee84486910]

Would i need to merge the data each row and column location into InDesign?    Once it is linked I am assuming if the location is moved within the InDesign file the link remains?  Also if the data in Excel is changed the data merge would be run and update all the fields within InDesign?  The catalog would have hundreds of links.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

I would suggest a third-party catalog plugin. You can work with exported data or have a direct connection to a database. 

Companies to research include:

• Em Software InData/InCatalog
• 65bit EasyCatalog (a la cart modules)
• Teacup Software DataLinker

There are more but that will give you a start in your research.