Hi Lisa,
if you open documents from InDesign CC 2015 where graphic cells contain text frames:
InDesign will crash immediately if you want to duplicate the table. Be it by alt+dragging the table character to a different text insertion point, be it by duplicating the page with the table.

What's new with InDesign 2020: Even if you want to add a text frame BY SCRIPTING to a graphic frame's container InDesign will crash immediately. This still worked with InDesign CC 2019. Not so with InDesign 2020.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( ACP )

Hi Lisa,
still an issue with InDesign 2020. Nothing changed.

What formatting plugin are you talking about?

I'd inform the makers of the plugin, that there is an issue with text frames or text paths within graphic cells.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( ACP )

This seems to be an issue still? Our IT staff upgraded from 2015 to 2018 and this is now a problem for us as well. We use a formatting plugin that takes advantage of this feature and it saves hours on formatting our catalogs. In the 2018 version, we're now getting an error that won't allow any part of the automatic formatting to process.

Hi Tara,
it's still possible to insert groups of frames into the container frame of a graphic cell. The only problem: The group must not contain a text frame or a frame with text on path.

This feature—groups with text frames insert in graphic cells—was removed, because a text frame inside a graphic cell will crash InDesign when the table is duplicated, copied/pasted…
I hope, that sometime the developers will fix that issue and the feature will be available again.

Regards,
Uwe

PS: There are still tricks to workaround, but I would not recommend them because of the crashes you can get when working on with a table.

You probably should post this in the bug report side of this form as well and not just the feature request.

I used to be able to paste a grouped object (for example, an image with a bit of text overlayed on it, banner style) into a graphic cell in a table. Currently this is not working - I can put a regular image (just a linked image) into a graphic cell, but as soon as I try to "paste into" a copied grouped object, it does not even offer paste into as an option.

I gather this functionality was removed while fixing a different issue - but it's something we use regularly at my company.

Hi Aman,
This is definitely something we use frequently - is this functionality something that can be resurrected?

Hi,
Yes! We have purposefully blocked the "paste into operation of a group inside a graphic cell of a table when the group has both a text frame and a graphic frame" in order to fix some other related issues and crash.
If you feel this is an important use case then please let us know so that we can process this as a feature(which was removed) request instead of a bug.

-Aman