table style

[stefanofe]

I have an excell sheet with many tables. Each table has the first two columns and the top row as in the example. Actually I also have 4 header lines with codes and a description. I could leave those lines out. The problem is that such a table cannot be defined with a style.

I can do it with the cell style. Indeed the cell style is the only one that allows me to update the excell data maintaining the table formatting. Does anyone have any suggestions?

A second problem then is this. If one of the numbers inside the table becomes longer after updating the table, it is not displayed. Can cells be automatically adapted to the content? I didn't succeed with none of the options available.

[macpawel]

If you need to update data from Excel file you have to:

Prepare Paragraph styles for any texts in your table - in this case two paragraph styles are needed

Prepare Cell Style and nest Paragpaph style inside. It's very importent to use nested Paragraph style inside Cell style

You need to prepare Header and left and body cel styles in this case

Finally prepare Table style including all of your Cell styles

so:

Paragraph > Cells > Table Styles are needed

and this way it works fine

[Peter Villevoye]

These two columns on the left are the odd ones which make it difficult to use a Table Style (based on Cell and Paragraph Styles). You can have multiple header and footer rows, but no outer left or right columns. So they'll always require some manual applying of a special Cell Style.

Maybe this Smart Style plugin of Woodwing can help you out.

Smart Styles - Adobe InDesign plugin | WoodWing Software

It takes a 'snapshot' of any table setup, and cleverly finds patterns in it to serve as a Smart Style. It's a bit pricey but you can give it a free spin for a month and see if it can save you a lot of time in the future.

With regards to updating Excel table content: just like with images, you can set text and data files to be linked, so any update in the data will be reflected in the InDesign document ! Check out this option under the Preferences:

Plus the crucial Import option when you Place the Excel file, to let the original formatting be ignored (or just carried over once) upon import and update. Otherwise all your formatting in InDesign will be lost again with every update.

[stefanofe]

with a different price I would have evaluated it and already in the past I became interested in this plugin because I know it's very useful.

I'm interested in the macpawel solution. I had not thought of the styles proposed.Explain better.

Look at the table: it has a gray line and the first two gray columns. Where there is 10% gray the text is bold. Then as you see there are horizontal gray lines and only one vertical. I don't think it's clear how nested style works in a table or in a cell.

If I give the style to the whole table it could have a logic ... I change the style with the tabulation ... but how do I do with the first gray lines?