🚀 go-pugleaf

New Member, long time lurker. 

This isn't exactly scripting but I read a regular InDesign post that said XML topics go here. 

Just moved to a new job (designing catalogs and sales sheets at a distributors)and am trying to overhaul their print workflow. Currently it is paste ups (yes, paste ups) and then manual typesetting. XML seemed the obvious choice to go to, even though all I really knew about it was its posibilities. To make this quick here is the situation. 

OS: XP 
ID 2.0.1 
Office 2002 

Workflow: 
Excel Data with several "fields" for each item 
Number, Name, Description, Size 

Imported into 
Access 
Just to convert rows to entries and export to XML as Excel doesn't seem to do it as well. 

XML imported into InDesign 
All the information is there, however, it is all in separate entries named exactly the same (the name of the database). This makes it extremely difficult to know which item is which without twirling down the arrows. Also, while the dragging in the structure window is a great way to edit the heirarchy, you can't seem to be able to edit elements' text. So while I can combine elements all I want, I can only add new unnamed elements. Am I missing something with InDesign's XML capabilities? 

Now, I'm VERY inexperienced with both databases and xml, so I'm slightly suprised I got this far. Is Access just not the right thing to use? Will I have to drag and nest and drag in Structure to have nexted elements or (gasp) manually edit (or script) my xml file? 

I realize some of this isn't quite InDesign, but since that's the program I work with the most, I thought I'd try here. 

Thanks, 
Brian