Problems with going from Pagemaker to InDesign

Question

Hello,
I'm going to try to make my problem as understandable as possible.
I work at a compay that has been making their catalog with Pagemaker, its a very small company so no real expertiese in PM or ID.
I know many are going to crinch when they hear this, but we are using links from excel to PM.
These links are used to change the language of the catalog. The basic idea is that the catalog is pretty much the same in all languages and its only small ammounts of text that changes depending on the language (most of it is numbers).
So we have a excel sheet with x columns where every column represents one language, every row represents a different textline. We also have a master column wich is the one that is linked to PM. This gives us the opportunity to change the language of the catalog by just pasting different language columns into the master column and update PM.
Most of you can probably see where this is going.
In design doesnt support links to excel it seems. So i was wondering if anyone has an idea that could help us transfer our catalog to ID in a smooth way and maby at the same time give us ideas how to improve our way of changing language, without too much hassle.
Any help is very appriciated
Thank you in advance
Simon

Answer 1

Oh i see, that explains why it did not work. thank you!
I use ID CS5.5 Version 7.5 (I think its the newest one), if this version supports conditional text it seems its an option that would be interesting to look into. I imagine it works as layers? I choose to show only the english/german/russian/.... layer of text so to say?
Does it work in the way that i make one textbox and write 3 different text's (languages) in that box and it only shows one or do i work with 3 different textboxes on top of eachother? i guess it would also be possible to link all the english/russian/german text together so i change them all at once in the entire catalog?
Thank you so much for the advice and patience, it's very helpful.
/Simon