My small company has been using PageMaker for years. They are trying to move off PageMaker because it will no longer work at some point. We are looking at InDesign as a possible replacement. One thing they use in PageMaker that must be do able in some fashion in the new program is having some graphs tied to some data (on a database or an excel sheet) that when the data is updated the graphs are updated.
I have been googling for a couple hours to try and find a way to make InDesign graphs tie to excel or dynamically link graphs from excel to InDesign. Is this possible?
One thing I did find is that you can make dynamically linked data to charts and graphs in Illustrator. Can you make dynamic linked images from Illustrator to InDesign? Meaning I have the data in my excel sheet, that links to the Illustrator which links to InDesign. So my work flow would be update data in excel. Tell Illustrator to update. Tell InDesign to update.
Given what I want to do, am I barking up the wrong tree? I am not familiar with Adobe's Creative Suite so I am looking for any advice or help I can get. I have downloaded the 30 day trial to InDesign and am trying to figure it out myself as well.
Yeah definitively. You can link an Illustrator file. When you update your chart within Illustrator and save it, the file is then out of date. Now when you open InDesign again, it will warn for out of date links and request you to update them. So your modified chart will be updated in the indesign file. I am not aware of dynamic charts plugin inside of InDesign. You can achieve some kind of charts with Easycatalog but it won't do circles for example.