QuarkXPress 10 Keeps Formatting when Updating Excel Tables
One of the new features in QuarkXPress 10 is that tables imported from Excel and formatted in QuarkXPress can now maintain the QuarkXPress formatting when the Excel table is updated.
The trick is to NOT include any of the Excel formatting when you first import the table — you can include the geometry, but then format the table in XPress.
To create a table in QuarkXPress and link an Excel spreadsheet to it, first get the Table tool:
Click and drag on the page to define an area for the table. Here’s what the first dialog box looks like after you do that:
When you check the “Link to External Data” checkbox and click the OK button, this dialog appears:
Note that the “Include Style Sheets” and “Include Formats” checkboxes are not checked. Browse to your Excel table and click the OK button to import it into the table on the QuarkXPress page.
When the original Excel table is changed, you can successfully update the table in QuarkXPress by choosing Utilities> Usage…
… and your existing QuarkXPress formatting will still apply to the updated table!
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.