Graphics in Adobe CS3

Hello everybody. I’m new here, this is my first post… and my first question:

Firstly: I’v never used Adobe CS3, but I had a trail version in my computer.
The things I’d like to do with are graphics.

I don’t know if anybody knows www.gapminder.org. It’s a very interesting web with plenty of graphics about several world indicators (health, population, etc.) and I think these graphics are made with Adobe CS3.

My problem is that I haven’t found in any Adobe help how to construct these graphics nor how can I import microsoft excel files with data.

I know there is a wide question but I’ll appreciate any kind of help about that.

Thank you in advance