Use Excel Tables in QuarkXPress
In QuarkXPress 6.1 and above, you can import a spreadsheet from Microsoft Excel as a table, optionally maintaining the formatting from the spreadsheet.
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.
Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.
Hi Jay!
You’ve helped me before with tables- I hope you van help me now.
I have a chart the I imported from Excel, since I have made many changes to this chart I do not want it to be linked to the Excel file anymore. Is there someway to unlink this chart?
Thanks
joann
Joann: 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. Personally, I’d like to see an “unlink” checkbox in either the Item> Modify dialog, or the Utilities> Usage dialog. But oh well…
Hello Jay,
I’ve put in table breaks between columns for style reasons (to create spaces instead of column grids.) What’s the best way now of keeping the table together as one unit? I don’t seem to be able to group the split parts.
In trying to resolve this, I tried converting the table to a group but wasn’t entirely comfortable that the text is no longer “tied” to the table cells (for example, it can get pushed out by an item’s runaround).
Thanks!
Karin: I’m not sure I’m understanding what you’ve done. Normally, a table *is* one unit. If you’ve converted it to a group of text boxes, then you’re right: the text can be bumped over by the runaround assigned to another item. There are some “interesting” workarounds you can try, such as converting the group of text boxes to a Composition Zone, but that gets kind of complicated to manage for an average user.
Are you sure you can’t just leave it as a table?
Well it’s two cheers for Quark once again/ I have 54 pages of tables all nicely formatted – I brought some of the formatting over from Excel – such as cell indent and vertical alignment because you cannot set these things on a style sheet in quark – now, if I update any data ALL – I repeat ALL – the formatting will be lost in any table I update – hoorah. So now I have to schlep through every single table manually altering the data and then manually update the excel so the data is right in that. I may as well have hand written the document.
Martin: I feel for you! It’s horrible that Quark can’t maintain the formatting when updating an imported Excel spreadsheet. I suppose they think that users fall into two categories: those who want to import the Excel spreadsheet once, format it and be done with it, and those who have an automated workflow that re-formats the tables when the data updates. Falling in-between those two is… messy. :-(
Can Quark import Word tables yet? when last I checked (version 7) it couldn’t.
Don’t bring any of the Excel formatting in, only the geometry, than do the formatting in Xpress. This works in version 10 and you can successfully update the Excel Table and then update the it via the Usage Box.
Peter: Wow, you’re right! As long as I don’t enable “Include Formatting” when importing it originally, QuarkXPress 10 will keep my table formatting when updating via Utilities> Usage. Yay!
Martin: I just tested it, and it doesn’t appear that QuarkXPress 10 imports tables from Word as tables. It does import the table data as text-tab-text-tab, etc., so you could format your own table in QuarkXPress — just like in earlier versions. (By the way, I also tried saving the Word document in RTF format, but that didn’t help.)
Hello, I am working on a catalog index and im trying to figure out how to import the excel table to quarkxpress 8, can you please help me?? Thank you in advance
Jennifer: I can certainly recommend my video-based training at Lynda.com for QuarkXPress 8! I have a short chapter in it that shows how to do that. http://www.lynda.com/tutorial/50682
I am trying to import Excel data into tables in Quark 9.2.1 where I will format according to branding guidelines.When I click import, choose mt Excel file, click off “include formatting in the Table Properties box, the file comes in with data scattered in the first column only. If I include formatting when importing, it’s better but I cannot format the Table according to the branding guideline.
If I change the imported table to Text, it does show up as all text but I cannot then make a table of it as it should appear.
I have also tried pasting the Excel doc into Text Editor and pasted it into Quark, saved it out of Excel as a txt doc but nothing works
Any tips or other tricks to try before I give up? Thanks!
Nancy: here are a couple of Planet Quark stories about that:
http://www.planetquark.com/?p=2979
http://www.planetquark.com/?p=1823
If these don’t give a clue as to what’s not working, perhaps the Tables chapter in my QuarkXPress training video will illuminate what’s happening:
http://www.lynda.com/tutorial/50682
It’s for QuarkXPress 8, but the feature hasn’t changed much.
Good evening. I really have a serious problem and i can’t find a solution. I’m trying to import a table in Quark from excel, not in pieces, the whole table, and it’s not possible and i break it into pieces and turn it to jpg images which is really annoying. I have tried everything but nothing works. And even if it works all the data in quark seem a mess. Please help me. Thank a lot