Link Excel Cell with Concatenate Function

[ShynnSup]

Hi,

I am trying to link an excel cell to my Indesign document. I am doing this by: Place>Type Cell Name>Unformatted Tabbed Text.

For some reason, the resulting Text Frame is empty. This only happens when said cell's text is a product of the concatenate function in Excel and I use "Unformatted Tabbed Text".

Why is this the case? All other funtions seems to work.

Thanks in advance,

Shynn

[Eugene Tyson]

Can you change the cell type to text in Excel?

[ShynnSup]

Hi Eugene, I tried it, but it didn't make a difference. When I link the cell the text frame is still blank.

[jane-e]

Hi

Are the source cells subject to frequent change? If not, try Paste Special > Values in another cell and use that cell in InDesign.

~ Jane

[jane-e]

Answer #2

I tried it after my first answer. It failed the first time with the default of Unformatted Table. I got a "-1" in the cell where I used Contantenate. The second time I chose Show Import Options > Formatted Table in the Place dialog box and got the correct results. See if that works for you.

EDIT: If you want tabbed text, select the table and convert it. But you also said you are trying to link the Excel cell, and if it's tabbed text then it won't be a linked table. Which are your trying to do?

~ Jane

[ShynnSup]

Hi Jane, thank you for your reply.

I am afraid the excel information is frequently changing. Without converting to “Values” in excel, the import only worked with “Formatted Table”. This is what I have been using as a workaround, but it is not ideal for me. I would like the frame to be a text frame and not a table.

I tried the command you suggested: Convert Table to Text. That is exactly what I want. Sadly, when I updated the excel file, the update within InDesign warned be that the link had been edited and I would lose the changes made (the conversion from table to text).

I just want to import a single excel cell (product of a concatenate) as plain text and have it behave as plain text in InDesign while being able to update it. It is weird that with other functions, such as SUM, InDesign has no trouble importing it as unformatted tabbed text.

[Eugene Tyson]

I have exeperienced something similar before - not the exact same.

But the cell has to be changed to Text before you insert you concatenate formula for some reason.

Try with a new file - as a test.

My experience was that a barcode ending 00000000 got cut down to only 4 0's in Excel - and converting the cell to Text before inserting the barcode managed to resolve it.

[ShynnSup]

Hi Eugene,

It is my understanding that the formula does not compute if you, prior to typing in, set the cell format to Text.

I tried it and it is so, at least on my side.