Maintaining Color Formatting in a Table Linked from Excel

[Guest]

Experts: I am formatting multiple files with many tables that must be pulled directly from Excel in order to ensure updated and accurate numbers. I used the file -> place command and then selected "formatted table". The initial placement worked well, but now I am having major troubles with the table formats. After updating, the shade of grey that was used in the tables has changed in some places, resulting in a mess of mis-matched tables and shades of grey. The Excel files are still properly formatted with all of the correct colors that InDesign should be pulling but is not. Does anyone know why this is happening?! I need a solution that does not include manually going through and changing the colors in InDesign or re-placing the files given that I have an extremely tight deadline.

[BobLevine]

Version of ID? Version of Excel? Operating system? Before and after screen shots.

[MargaretClark808]

InDesign CC 2017, Excel 2013, and Windows Operating System. Here are the before (lighter grey) and after (dark grey) issues (with purposely data removed/crossed out). Additionally, some of the tables have dark grey in spots where there was no fill at all before. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to the ones that are changing.

[BobLevine]

Here's a quick test. Enable separations preview and run your cursor over the grays. What are the percentages before and after?

Another test would be to add the colors to the swatches panel and see what they are.

[MargaretClark808]

The before is: CMYK: 36%, C: 14% M: 11% Y:11% K:0%

The after is: CMYK: 65%. C:25% M:20% Y:20% K:0%

[BobLevine]

Try adding the swatches as RGB

[MargaretClark808]

Will I then need to update the colors in each individual table or should adding the swatch as RGB automatically update the issues with the tables?

[Eric Dumas · Accepted solution]

If you double-click on a swatch colour, you should be able to change each of them to RGB which will update your document.

Otherwise, you can create the additional swatches, then delete the 'old' one from the swatch palette confirming the replacement with the new one. This is a slightly longer process.

[MargaretClark808]

Fantastic, thank you! This seems to work. However, is there any way I can ensure that they won't change every single time the tables update? They've already changed back with updates  and I don't want to continue to repeat this process for all of my different documents.

[Eric Dumas]

That's a good point. The syncing process will re-import the updated data as well as the formatting.

Make sure to control the style of your table with table styles based on Paragraph styles and Cell styles. When importing the tables, check the box to display the import options as you can control what is imported.

My preference is to rely on Table/Cell styles because if they nee to be reapplied it is done in a single click.