tip of the day: import excel charts in indesign
Author: webee | Filed under: inDesign, tip of the dayin a post below, i’ve told you how you can import excel tables in indesign.
now i’d like to complete that post with a detailed explanation on how to import excel graphics in indesign, as this operation is a little more complex and requires more intermediate steps.
what you have to do is this:
1. create an adobe pdf file from the excel file and then importing the pdf file into indesign. (you’ll need to use adobe pdfmaker or adobe acrobat distiller to create the pdf file)
2. you can copy pie charts or other excel charts and paste them into indesign, but the quality may not be great.
3. instead, try pasting the chart directly into adobe illustrator.
clean it up a little and make any appropriate changes (such as converting rgb colors to cmyk), and then save the file in illustrator format.
4. then, place the native illustrator file into your indesign document.
and… this is it! 
you have a beautifull excel graphic in your indesign layout!
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comment “import excel charts in indesign”
[...] you want to use it in indesign, here’s how you can import excel tables to indesign, import excel charts in indesign, and how to import word elements in [...]
I place excel tables into InDesign and maintain the linked source documents that change regularly so I can then just update them in ID. I use TableStyles & CellStyles plugin from Teacup to retain formatting and creative control.
However, I’ve encountered a wrong rounding problem with the placed excel files.
I.e., figures that are input with two decimal places in Excel and are formatted to show with no decimal places, are of course rounded off correctly in Excel. However, on placing this file in InDesign, numbers originally entered as ending in .45 through .49 are wrongly rounded up in InDesign. For example, what was originally 22.46 and showed as 22 in Excel becomes 23 in InDesign.
Have you encountered this problem or know of a solution?
hi Lohrs,
it happend to me too, with the tables but on the sizes of the objects, and i didn’t find a solution until now.
i suspect that this is because the numbers’ formats are different in excel and indesign, or the fact that maybe excel doesn’t have units and increments. i don’t work much in excel sooo….
maybe someone who knows excel better could help us.
thanks for the comment, come again
hi lohrs,
would it be a solution for you if you’d just import already rounded values calculated from the initial values?
this way you would have the initial column containing non rounded values and a special column with calculated rounded values. and you would import the second one into indesign.
if this is a solution for you, then excel has a round function going like this:
round(cell, number of digits to round to).
if you set the number of digits to round to 0, then excel will round the numbers to an integer number not using any decimals.
ex: if you have in b2 the value 23.433 and in b3 the value 23.55
then:
round(b2,0)=23
round(b3,0)=24
round(b2,1)=23.4
round(b3,1)=23.6
i hope this helps
robi
I’ve tried the tip of the day “import excel charts in indesign” and the quality (in InDesign) is not good at all. There has to be a better way to get quality Excel graphs to look good in InDesign … this baffles me no end!
I’m new to InDesign altogther. We are currently using CS4 and I am trying to import excel files for our Annual Report - documents, tables, charts etc into InDesign but having no success. I seem to have success with importing the word tables from the Financial Document, but it doesn’t import the word document portion of the document or the excel tables that are set within.
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.