TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I tend to do this, too, because I like Chicago-style tables. But sometimes, especially for financial tables, it's better to import from Excel. Couple of reasons for this;
First, the numbers may be changing rapidly up until about 11:30 pm the night before the job is due. One change in one cell of an Excel table can result in pages of changes in your publishing program--changes you will have to massage manually or enter manually--and you don't want to make a mistake with auditable numbers.
Second, about the time the CFO gets done with the numbers, the CEO walks in and say, "hey, can you throw in those Excel charts, too?" So you might as well be prepared.
I've found that I can match font, rule, and spacing characteristics in Excel without too much trouble and then get the finance guys to use my tweaked Excel file for further updates. After that, it's just a matter of repeating the import procedure into my publishing program of choice (usually PM), and voila! The update is done in minutes, with no proofreading required.
Dick
"Hart, Geoff" wrote:
>To get an Excel table into Quark (or any other software), export the
>relevant rows and columns as tab-delimited text. From there, you can import
>the text into any software that can import text files, including most
>table-editing software. Even if you don't have a table editor (e.g., you
>don't like the one that accompanies PageMaker), it's easy to produce simple,
>effective tables. Simply create paragraph-level styles called "Table X
>headings" and "Table X rows" (where X = the name or number of the table),
>and set the tabs appropriately for the styles. Apply the appropriate style
>to all rows in your table, throw in a few manually drawn horizontal lines,
>and you've got something that communicates every bit as effectively as what
>you'll get from a full-fledged table editor. It won't look nearly so fancy
>without a lot more work, but I've done this for years and it works like a
>charm. Of course, I like my tables simple, and YMMV.
