Using html in Data Merge

Question

We need to print several thousand cards using data merge with data coming from an Excel file. The data in that Excel file contains formatting in html: <i></i>, <b></b>,, &#956;, etc. which we would like to carry over to ID and use so that we don't have to redo the formatting and special characters in ID. I've been searching forums for a couple of days now and found this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1508807/getting-website-data-into-adobe-indesign
So it seems like it's possible. We weren't able to find the sdk they're talking about, but came to this:
https://code.google.com/p/ickmull/
And got stuck in the part where we had to do this:
xsltproc --output myNewFile.icml --novalid tkbr2icml-v04x.xsl myWebPage.html
So can InDesign "read" html or no? Is there any other way to do this?

Answer 1

You're absolutely right. If it were only one little card, or a dozen, or even a hundred, we could do this. But it's thousands of cards we have to print. If I follow you correctly, I'd have to split the contents of the cells in that column that has the html in it and sort the snippets of text out according to their formatting, adding more columns, and each new column should fit inside a neat little box in the InDesign file, where it gets its formatting. I think I can do the split with sql and then turn it into csv. But then, the difficulty is that the cards we need to print don't have a recurring design pattern inside that html cell, hence the need to preserve the html. Did you check out the stackoverflow link? Is it possible to "teach" ID to "read" html formatting coming from DataMerge?
You can also use F/C to apply character styles based on tags for text which does not match the paragraph style. I don't get this. When you say "tags", what are you referring to? What paragraph style do you mean?
And now we have a new problem. Yesterday, ID would accept my csvs as legit data sources. Now, nothing I do can make it accept new csvs as data sources. I get:
The data source cannot be opened. Confirm that the file exists and that you have rights to open it, then choose the Select Data Source command again.
What is the right setup for a csv file so that ID will want to perform Data Merge with it?