Intermittently can't copy pie graph from Illustrator to InDesign

Question

I've created a pie graph in Illustrator using the pie graph tool.

I've selected the pie graph with the black arrow tool, and pressed CMD + C on the keyboard, and selected a blank page in my open InDesign document, and pressed CMD + V on the keyboard, and nothing gets pasted.

In Illustrator, I have tried selecting both the layer and the object in the layers panel to copy from, but both fail to paste into InDesign.

Using v24.2.3 of Illustrator & v15.1.1 of InDesign on an iMac.

The last pie graph I was working on in Illustrator I had problems with, I selected the Layer in the breadcrumbs where the filename is above the canvas, and that solved the problem.

In the new Illustrator document in the same Illustrator session as the last successful copy and paste, I don't see the breadcrumbs when selecting the 2nd pie graph.

Help appreciated.

Answer 1

Copy pasting not good, use linking instead.

Save the pie as an AI file and on its on artboard. I'm guessing you already have that.

Drag the AI file into the INDD document, which creates a live link of the AI file, without actually dumping the artwork into the INDD document.

The same result is achieved by using the File → Place command to link external files into your INDD document.

This is the safer, cleaner, more predictable way of importing from AI into ID.