I'm in CS5.5 . I have no problem placing an Excel spreadsheet with the cell range I want and applying cell formatting in InDesign. I am trying to build eight similar documents that will pull data in several tables from a document specific Excel spreadsheet. The only difference is the data itself. I want to build one master InDesign document (master.indd) that links to a corresponding master Excel file (master.xlsx). I'll then do all the table formatting in master.indd once before saving as the eight individual files I need (doc1.indd, doc2.indx, etc.). Soon I'll receive the specific Excel files (doc1.xlxs, doc2.xlsx, doc3.xlxs, etc.) and I will open each InDesign file and relink master.xlxs to the appropriately numbered and corresponding Excel spreadsheet.
My problem is all the formatting of the imported tables is stripped away when I relink. There are at least 60 tables being imported. I'd prefer to format 60 tables versus 480. I've tried importing the Excel as formatted, unformatted, I've applied cell styles in Excel and InDesign but can't catch a break. Can anyone help?