Database Publishing -Excel into Indesign

[ensta]

Hi,

 

Am trying to establish if it is possible to output from an FM DB for publishing in InDesign.

The process for transferring into InDesign involves converting to a CSV. The DB has pics as refs and text with line breaks. Both of which are causing problems. The line breaks are interpretted as separations and as such they are seen as new fields and the pics aren't displayed, only the filename is recorded in the field. Also one of the text field, that has a large amount of text in it, is just displayed as ######.

Any tips on parsing the text so its readable and keeps the line breaks but stays in the same field?

Also can pics be embedded and retain their full path details in an Excel save as?

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

N

[Vaughan]

The problem is that by the CSV definition a paragraph is used to delimit each record. The only way around it is to convert the breaks to something else, or use another format.

 

Look into whether InDesign will accept XML, I'd be very surprised if it did not. Then export as XML. InDesign may also accept html tables, that would be simpler than xml.