I have a table that I imported from Excel, and since I have made many changes to this table in QuarkXPress I do not want it to be linked to the Excel file any longer. Is there some way to unlink this table?

The answer is simple, if not obvious:

To break the link with the original Excel file, choose Table> Convert Table> To Group. (You can also right-click or Control-click on the table, and choose the same thing.) The table will keep its formatting, but no longer be linked to the original Excel file.

The table keeps a dynamic link to the original Excel spreadsheet, so when the spreadsheet changes, you can instantly update the data in the QuarkXPress table. To update the table, or to see if the Excel spreadsheet has changed, choose Utilities> Usage and click the Tables tab.

Warning: if you have applied any formatting to your table in QuarkXPress, it will be lost when you update it with new Excel data, so you’ll probably want to use the spreadsheet as-is.

Tip: when first importing an Excel spreadsheet, leave the Include Formats and Include Geometry options unchecked. Some spreadsheets are enormous, so it’s best to see how big it is first.

Here is Quark’s list of the features in XPressMath:

• Associate characters with procedures (such as Sigma with summation)
• Typeset horizontal and vertical placement
• Insert fixed integrals, radicals, and summations
• Customise space around mathematical structures
• Import and export ASCII text for offline keyboarding
• Edit in WYSIWYG view to easily format previously created mathematic equations and structures
• Perform advanced formatting in the Equation Builder window
• Export an equation in JPEG format (replaces PICT [Mac] and BMP [Windows] export)
• Support Unicode
• Access four additional pi character levels

XPressMath formerly cost $259 for earlier versions of QuarkXPress, but now it’s free!

It adds new timesaving abilities, such as:

• Find boxes by more than 50 attributes, such as background color, dimensions, suppression, opacity, frame style, empty boxes, picture resolution, color model, and picture status
• Adjust view percentage with a slider
• Save and use custom view percentages
• Remove local formatting from a paragraph
• Count words, characters or paragraphs
• Fit box to picture or text

• Display picture file size, format, color mode, and creator application
• Update all modified pictures
• Show a picture file in the Finder or launch its creator application
• List fonts & colors used in imported EPS files
• Convert measures between inches, mm, picas, pixels, etc.
• Select reference points to specify item coordinates and dimensions relative to any side of the item (top-right of the box, center, etc.)
• A Tables panel for quick access to table functions
• Insert special characters
• Redefine a Style Sheet to match selected text
• Interactively change almost any value by pressing Up and Down arrows
• Add guides precisely, create a guide at text baseline, and step & repeat guides
• Determine the “effective” resolution of a picture, which takes into account scaling
• And much more

We enthusiastically endorse FullMeasure as an extreme efficiency-enhancer. It costs $89 and is only available for Macs. Badia has a free 30-day trial version available. (Versions for QuarkXPress 4/5/6/7 may have slightly different features.)

The trick is to use Quark’s Job Jackets feature, and to place into the Job Jacket a profile for the device(s) that will be outputting the document. An additional Amazing Feature of this approach is that if the output process changes, simply dropping a new profile into the Job Jacket will cause all projects based on that Job Jacket to update their on-screen display. The designer doesn’t need to know anything about profiles — their project simply updates.

In this three-minute video, I show how to preview your document in any of about a dozen different color spaces, including the specific process color system you’ll be using. 

The video comes courtesy of our friends at Lynda.com. They were gracious enough to share a selection of chapters from my “QuarkXPress 7 New Features”  video training, so I hand-picked several that I thought would be most appealing to new users of QuarkXPress 7 and QuarkXPress 8.

Play Video Tutorial: Automatic Color Management in QuarkXPress 7 and 8

This is the seventh in the series. You can also watch my previous videos “Synchronized Items“, ”Using Photoshop Files in QuarkXPress“, ”The Amazing (and overlooked) Glyphs Palette!“, ”Using Picture Effects to Edit Images in QuarkXPress“, ”Alpha Channels“, “Multiple Windows“ and ”Alpha Channels“.

For comparison, linking an Excel spreadsheet to a table in InDesign requires that you set an application preference before importing the spreadsheet into the table. In CS4, choose InDesign> Preferences> File Handling and tick the checkbox next to “Create Links When Placing Text and Spreadsheet Files“. In CS3, it’s under InDesign> Preferences> Type.

But this “synchronization” goes farther than that: you can control whether the item’s properties and/or the properties of the item’s content changes. In other words, the color, size, opacity, etc., of a box can be synchronized, while the content can remain free to be different in each box. Or, the content of the box (text or picture) can be synchronized, while the box itself can look quite different in different instances.

Come see what I mean in this 13-minute video tutorial, courtesy of our friends at Lynda.com. They were gracious enough to share a selection of chapters from my “QuarkXPress 7 New Features” video training, so I hand-picked several that I thought would be most appealing to new users of QuarkXPress 7 and QuarkXPress 8.

Play Video Tutorial: Synchronized Items

This is the sixth in the series. You can also watch my previous videos “Using Photoshop Files in QuarkXPress“, ”The Amazing (and overlooked) Glyphs Palette!“, ”Using Picture Effects to Edit Images in QuarkXPress“, ”Alpha Channels“ and “Multiple Windows“,  ”Alpha Channels“,

New to version 4 is the ability to copy a sequence of formatting from a series of paragraphs and apply them to a new series of unformatted text. This one feature can save hours of formatting time when working on a project with a repeating pattern of formatting, such as catalogs, technical books, directories, etc.

Additional features:

• You can copy text without copying its character formatting
• You can copy rule attributes and tab settings
• You can position a box exactly in relation to the baseline of text in another box (great for captions!)
• You can copy and paste box positions from one page to another
• You can copy and paste guides between pages
• You can paste items BEHIND other items instead of in front, and Group them as you paste them.
• You can copy and paste formatting between documents
• You can use Duplica from a palette, a contextual menu, or use keyboard shortcuts.

Badia Duplica costs about US$52.

• It adds the color libraries for Pantone’s Goe Bridge coated collection of 2,058 colors.
• It fixes some bugs.
• It has an easier process for installation over a network.
• It lets you activate the free 60-day Test Drive version to a full version without requiring a reinstallation.
• It localises the interface for Danish, Norwegian, Czech, Portuguese (European), and Finnish. 

The updater is available at http://8.quark.com/downloads/login.aspx.

Bugs that are fixed include problems with copy/paste of imported PSD, TIFF, and JPEG images, improper display of fonts in imported EPS files if QuarkXPress preferences are stored in the user Library folder, hyphenation and drop cap issues, text in anchored tables, and more.

A complete list of the bugs that have been fixed, as well as any remaining issues they know of, is available at http://8.quark.com/techinfo/known_issues.html. One thing to note: QuarkXPress 8.02 is not currently compatible with Quark Publishing System (QPS) 8.

In this video tutorial by Mike Strange of Talented Pixie, you’ll see how to make best use of all the kinds of tabs, but more importantly you’ll see how easy it is to create an engaging, colorful table from an imported Excel spreadsheet.

My favorite part is when he colors portions of the rows with a transparent blend, and then drops pictures into the cells in the first column. Slick!

Talented Pixie develops video tutorials for many design and publishing products, and has free sample chapters on their website. I encourage you to have a look at their more than 400 tutorials — something there could make your work a lot easier.

PLAY Video: Tables