Adobe has an agreement with Adobe Press and Peachpit Press that allows me to request excerpts from books to be published on the web. Once these excerpts are made available, I link to them from the related Help topics. If you can't find the information you need in the Help topic, you may be able to answer your question in these books.
In September 2009, several excerpts from the great InDesign CS4 Real World book were made available.
Here's an updated list:
Adobe InDesign RealWorld CS4 by David Blatner and Olav Kvern
I scored a copy of Adobe InDesign Real World CS4. I highly recommend this book.
Interesting factoid - Ole Kvern and I worked together on the InDesign 1.0 user guide.
Excerpt: Interactive documents
Dynamic documents Help chapter
Excerpt: Paragraph Rules
Add rules (lines) above or below paragraphs Help topic
Excerpt: Text Wrap
Wrapping text around objects Help topic
Excerpt: Tables
Tables Help chapter
Excerpt: Placing Text on a Path
Creating type on a path Help topic
Adobe InDesign RealWorld CS3 by David Blatner and Olav Kvern
Here are excerpts from Real World InDesign CS3. I also provided the corresponding CS4 Help topics:
Excerpt: Footnotes
Footnotes Help topic
Excerpt: Inline Frames and Anchored Objects
Anchored objects Help topic
Excerpt: Text Variables
Text variables Help topic
Excerpt: Working with Master Spreads
Master pages Help topic
Excerpt: Bullets and Numbering in InDesign CS3
Bullets and numbering Help topic
Excerpt: Trapping
Trapping color Help topic
Excerpt: Books
Creating book files Help topic
Excerpt: Table of Contents
Creating a table of contents Help topic
Excerpt: Indexes (indices)
Creating an index Help topic
Excerpt: Exporting PDF
Export to PDF Help topic
Adobe InDesign Styles
I got a copy of Michael Murphy's new book a few months ago. It's great. By learning how to use styles with various InDesign features, you can tap into unknown capabilities and simplify your workflows. Check out these excerpts to see what I mean.
Working With Styles, CSS, and XML in Adobe InDesign CS4
InDesign CS3 Visual Quickstart Guide by Sandee Cohen
Sandee's book is a great reference guide, especially for beginners. The InDesign CS4 QuickStart Guide is available, but I requested these still-valid excerpts from the CS3 book.
Excerpt: Color Management
Color management Help topic
Excerpt: Libraries and Snippets
Use snippets Help topic
Excerpt: Working in Color
Color Help chapter
Excerpt: Points and Paths
Drawing with the Pen tool Help topic
Adobe InDesign Classroom in a Book
Excerpts
: Working with Long Documents lesson
Long document features Help topic
Getting to Know InDesign lesson
Getting started in InDesign Help topic
Instant InDesign by Gabriel Powell
Another fine InDesign book. Check out Gabriel's instantindesign.com website for videos and other resources.
Excerpts:
Step-by-step Approach to Designing Templates
Seven Principles of Great Template Design
Getting Your Feet Wet with InDesign CS3 Templates
Use document templates Help topic
Moving to InDesign by various authors
Good resource for anyone making the transition from QuarkXPress or PageMaker to InDesign.
Excerpt: Part 4: Building Documents
Convert PageMaker documents Help topic
Excerpt: Chapter 1: Top Ten Gotchas for QuarkXPress Users
Open QuarkXPress documents in InDesign Help topic
A Designer's Guide to Adobe InDesign and XML by James J. Maivaid
If you need to use XML and InDesign, this book is a must.
Excerpt: Chapter 2: InDesign's XML Features
XML Help chapter
Mastering InDesign CS3 for Print Design and Production by Pariah S. Burke
Excerpts:
Chapter 1: Customizing (PDF)
That's it for now.
As a bonus, I'm adding this free link to the Create text frames Help topic. (If you really want to know why I'm linking to this topic, it's because users searching for "text box" in our custom search engine aren't getting good results, and I want to boost this topic by linking to it. Just a little housecleaning.)
How do I do barcharts and pie charts in InDesign? Read about doing in Excel and export out to Illustrator but cumbersome. Anything better? Doing alot of revisions for a fin'l document. Anything to make it easier would be appreciated.
[I'm not aware of anything better than the Excel/Illustrator workflow. You may want to ask this in the user forum:
www.adobe.com/support/forums
-Bob]
I do this all the time and have two different work flow solutions. As far as I know, there is no plug-in to do this directly in InDesign. Since I consider the rest of the CS Suite plug-ins for ID anyway, I don't see the need.
1) Excel to PDF- for ones that come from someone's else's design or idea that you must use or you are under a time crunch. Make sure you clean it up (remove legend, etc.) before either 'Save As..'or export to PDF from Excel or 'Open' in Acrobat.
2) Illustrator to .ai- for ones you need to dress up really swell. The 'Graph' tool hasn't been updated in the last decade but it is usable. I use the 3D effects to 'wow' the punters.
Import either into InDesign. Keep them as data in your 'Images' folder always! Don't ever convert them to art (in other words, don't disconnect the chart from the data in the spreadsheet), so you can do the inevitable changes that come down.
Thanks, Bob! Yes, Real World InDesign CS4 is widely available from amazon.com, bn.com, and your local bookstore. Enjoy!
Great list, Bob, but you left out the excerpts from Mastering InDesign CS3 for Print Design and Production.
Chapter 1: Customizing
http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/68/04701145/0470114568.pdf
From Chapter 12: Collaboration:
http://quarkvsindesign.com/articles/a1/features/2007/indesign-cs3-mastering-design-collaboration/
{I'll update the list now. Thanks for letting me know.}