Automatically convert first rows of Excel files to header rows in Adobe InDesign

InDesign is evolving for sure. But there are still things which drive me crazy. Like the problem that a placed (and linkes) Excel file will lose it’s header row (meaning after the link update the first row is a normal body row). One has to reconvert the first rows to header rows each time you update the Excel file link.
Of course you can work-around this nifty „bug“ by just give the first row another formatting. But if you depend on functions like repeating header rows for long tables spanning over several pages this doesn’t work.
Even in InDesign CS6 this problem isn’t fixed. So we have to help ourselves: use script automation to fix the problem.

The script just gets all tables in your document and sets the first row type as header row. Thus, the next step would be to attach an update event handler onto the Excel file links (but this didn’t work for me, tonight. An extension of the script will follow 😉 )

So here is the script code. Save it as .jsx file in your InDesign script folder (on a Mac it could be /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Preferences/Adobe InDesign/Version 7.0/en_US/Scripts/Scripts Panel) and run it after every update of your Excel file.

var myTables = app.activeDocument.stories.everyItem().tables;

for (var i = 0; i < myTables.length; i++) {
    myTables[i].rows.firstItem().rowType = RowTypes.HEADER_ROW;
}

Hope this works for you. Feel free to add your questions and feedback in the comments section below.

Remark: This should work with all InDesign versions starting at CS5.