Linked text boxes on different documents with different colours

[Tall Stories Creative]

Hi all - looking for help that is difficult to describe so quite hard to google. If this rings a bell to existing questions please to link to them and I'd be super grateful.

I'll simplify my situation. I create many menus for many different bars across the same chain. Many use the same menu but with a colour tweak. They often change prices which results in a lot of small messy InDesign edits across each menu. 

I'm looking for a way to change all the menus at the same timem from one source document, but keep each menu's colour scheme the same. So I could click "Vodka - 5" and change the 5 to a 6 and have it updated on each menu. I've tried making each text box into a linked ICML file that I can place and that works for the changes, however the colours don't work - if Menu 1 is red and then I update blue Menu 2 and click save, Menu 1 also turns to blue and then same for gold Menu 3 - the text changes on each menu but all the Menu's colour schemes revert to the one that was saved last. 

Any help appreciated, thanks in advance!

[John Mensinger]

I'd do that with object styles. If your color-filled text frames all had an Object Style of the same name, but edited in each individual document to apply that document's designated color, it would persist. And, even if the color were lost, it could be easily restored with a single click.

[Tall Stories Creative]

Thanks for the quick reply John. There's quite a bit of different formatting on each line, even within the same sentence, for example

TYPEFACE1 CAPS BLUE, typeface2 italic grey..........TYPEFACE 1 SMALLER GREEN

So would I still be able to do that with styles?

[jmlevy · Accepted solution]

Did you try the place and link feature, with styles mapping?

https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/linked-content.html

[Tall Stories Creative]

Ah thanks this looks really helpful. I'd done most of this, but the different colours were still proving to be a problem. I'll give it another go

[jmlevy]

but the different colours were still proving to be a problem

No, if you map styles.

[Tall Stories Creative]

Yes, I've managed it! Thank you so much. I just have to re-write all my menus with much better styling, thank you!