Release: InData 3.4 for InDesign 2023-2025

This release adds direct import from Excel spreadsheets.

• Adds Import from Spreadsheet File… for importing data directly from an Excel workbook (.xlsx file).

  

  Select Import from Spreadsheet File… to bring up InData’s spreadsheet file picker dialog. Choose a file, check the Show Import Options box if you’d like to alter which sheet or range of rows is imported, and then select the Open button.

  If you’ve chosen not to show options, InData will import the “first” row through the last row in the selected workbook’s “active” sheet (usually the one that’s displayed when the workbook is saved). The first row is determined by the Data preference’s first row is header setting.

  If, instead, you’ve opted to Show Import Options, InData will present a dialog with choices you can make that are specific to the selected workbook.

  

  Here, choose the sheet (the default is always the workbook’s “active” sheet) and range of rows that you’d like to import (the default is always 1 to end). As with importing data from text files, selecting first row is header causes the first physical row of data in the selected sheet to be ignored and the second physical row to be seen, for import-row-1-through-end purposes, as the first row.

  (While changes are not remembered from import to import, the first row is header setting is currently shared with text file imports and may be preset with InData’s Data preferences dialog.)

  When you’re done making changes, select OK to begin the import.

  Note that InData may import empty rows that are left below a sheet’s interesting content as empty records. To prevent this, either remove the extra rows from the sheet using your spreadsheet app or have InData crop them out by providing a row to end on other than the default (end) in Spreadsheet Options.

• Changes the existing Import… entries in the InData menu to better indicate the source of the text data. What was Import from File... is now Import from Text File…. Likewise, Import from Clipboard… is now Import from Clipboard Text, and Import from Pasteboard… is now Import from Pasteboard Story.

• Fixes a long-standing problem that causes InDesign to shut down when importing special Unicode characters that are represented with surrogate pairs (whose code points are beyond the Basic Multilingual Plan).