🚀 go-pugleaf

We have gone through two iterations of linking to Excel tables.

The first was to link the tables then use SmartStyles from Woodwing software to style the charts and remove Excel's formatting. We updated the links and the SmartStyle formatting using a script.

Our second and current rendition is to add InDesign tagged text markup to the Excel workbook and write a VBA plug in for Excel to export to tab delimited files that are linked to our InDesign documents. By using the tagged text we now are using InDesign styles. Even as easy as SmartStyles was to use, we have found this second method more easily updated in our environment.

We use this procedure to update a broad sheet stock page five days a week and an eight page broadsheet weekly Market Review product once a week.

We produced pages using both methods I described in under five minutes. And using scripts we can verify the date of the linked files so we don't use an Excel file or now a linked text file that hadn't been updated.