This document aims to guide reporting companies and design agencies in collaborating effectively using Integrate. Integrate is used to securely add external data sources (Excel) to CtrlPrint and establish a seamless connection with CtrlPrint documents.
This document will cover:
- Setting up Integrate Preferences
- Setting up the Excel data source
- Handling tables within Adobe InDesign/InCopy
We strongly recommend reading through the whole document regardless of your role.
Setup Integrate Preferences
Before you begin integrating data, take a moment to set up your Integrate preferences. This will streamline your workflow and ensure correct formatting from the start. You can find the setup instructions here.
To ensure that the formatting settings are applied correctly when using Integrate, it's important to use the default thousand separator in your Excel number format. This is usually the default way of handling number format in Excel.
Set the number format preference before uploading your data source file. If you change the preference after adding the file in CtrlPrint, all linked elements will require an update and you'll need to refresh your documents (see this support article on how to refresh data source).
Locales: Select a locale that matches your reporting language (e.g., English (United Kingdom), Swedish (Sweden)). This unifies how dates and times appear, regardless of individual regional user settings.
Affected Formats: This setting impacts standard Excel date formats like short date, long date, short time, etc. Custom Excel date formats will follow this for month/day name translations but retain any unique format structure.
How to best set up the Excel data source
Data Format
Please note that CtrlPrint Integrate only supports .xlsx (does not support .xls or macro-enabled .xlsm) and has a 32MB limit. It is also not possible to use password encrypted Excel-files with Integrate.
Naming the Named Range and Tabs in the Excel Sheet
As renaming the named range in the Excel sheet will unlink the data, it would be advisable to give the named range a more universal name rather than a name that specifically refers to a certain project (for example “Financial Statement” rather than “Financial statement 2023").
This also applies to the tab names in the Excel sheet. Changing the tab name will also unlink the data.
Single-Cell Named Ranges
If you create a named range consisting of only a single cell, Integrate will treat it as text instead of a table when inserted into your report. This is useful for inserting individual values, titles, or short pieces of text directly into your chapters.
To read in detail how to prepare your Excel files for CtrlPrint Integrate, please check here.
Handling tables within Adobe InDesign/InCopy
When the table is first inserted, it is unformatted (example image of unformatted table below) so it is essential to format/style it according to your design preferences.
InDesign users can set up Table/Cell styles for InCopy users to apply. The styling needs to be done the first time when you insert the tables (example image of a table after applying styles below).
The next time you refresh your data, the tables will retain the styles.
Why Table and Cell Styles?
Table and Cell styles are powerful tools that will optimise your workflow when designing tables in InDesign. Once you define specific styles, you can easily apply them throughout your tables, ensuring a professional, uniform look across your entire report.
How to Apply Table Styles
Applying Table Styles helps achieve consistent table designs quickly:
- Locate the Table Styles Panel: Navigate to Windows →Styles → Table Styles.
- Select your Table: Click within the table in your InDesign document where you want to apply a style.
- Choose or create a Style: Within the Table Styles panel, find the style you'd like to use. If the panel is empty besides [Basic Table], you will need to create your custom Table Styles by selecting the “Create new style” button at the bottom. Click directly on the style's name to apply it to your selected table.
How to Apply Cell Styles
Cell styles help control the styling of individual cells or ranges within your tables, here's how to use them:
- Open the Cell Styles Panel: Navigate to Window → Styles → Cell Styles.
- Select your Cells: Within your InDesign document, click to select the cell or range of cells where you want to apply the style.
- Choose or create a Style: Find the desired Cell Style or create your own in the Cell Styles panel and click its name. Your selected cells will instantly update with the style’s attributes.
Adding or Deleting Rows/Columns in an Existing Data Source
Adding or deleting rows/columns within the named range will expand or contract the named range automatically. However, the table might have to be reformatted in InDesign or InCopy to accommodate the updated rows/columns.
Active Initial Insertion Point
You cannot insert a table and text (single-cell text) inside another table. You need to select an active insertion point (the blinking cursor in a text document, or a text field where you type) in a text frame to insert table and text via Integrate.
Header Rows in Tables
The Table Header functionality in InDesign is unfortunately not compatible with Integrate at this stage. This means that when you refresh the data, the table header in the first table will not retain the styling and the following table headers will not be included in the tables when the data is refreshed.
As a result all rows beneath the additional table headers (those in the additional tables) will move one step (row) upwards, and inherit the styling from the row above.
To avoid this, you can convert the table headers to regular body rows (and apply header cell and paragraph styling to them). Once this is done, the styling should retain as expected when the data is refreshed.