Easy Method for getting text from Excel into AutoCAD

[Dinochrome]

This is one way. It goes from Excel into AutoCAD.

I note I am not able to find the pastespecial on the new ribbon. I had to change my workspace to AutoCAD Classic. (There may be other ways)

Open your Excel spreadsheet.

Select the area you wish to paste into Autocad.

Right click and copy it to your clipboard.

Open your drawing file.

Perform a pastespecial. I use the "Paste" radio button with the "AutoCAD Entities" option.

This will insert an AutoCAD table.

If you wish you can explode it down to lines and text.

Hope this helps someone.

Super users are going to consider this a step back probably, but ti is fairly fast and easy.

[fkellogg]

Paste Special is awesome all around.

I recently found the most amazing trick for going from a plot style table straight into Excel!

Open Excel to a blank worksheet.
Highlight all the rows in the Table View of the plot style table.
Click-drag the table rows into the excel window.
Period.

Of course, it does not work in the opposite direction, at least not as far back as version 2004, which is the best I can get.

I recently had to work within the confines of another company's color based ctb, and the spreadsheet sure did simplify figuring out what colors to use.

[Brian C]

"Paste Special" may not be in the ribbon, but you can easily add it to the Quick Access Toolbar" (QAT) by opening the down button and clicking on "more commands."

[rkmcswain]

What I've started doing is opening the Excel file, and print it to a PDF, then I xref the PDF into the drawing.

We have a particular spreadsheet we use all the time, and it gets updated frequently.
As long as we print it to the same PDF file name each time, when we open the DWG, we always get the latest version.

This particular spreadsheet has a complex structure with a lot of merged cells, etc. and OLE and DataLinks never do a perfect job of getting it to look exactly like it does in Excel.

If we need to import true CAD entities into the drawing, then we use XL2CAD from Dotsoft.com to import the Excel file.

[cadtag]

What I've started doing is opening the Excel file, and print it to a PDF, then I xref the PDF into the drawing.

We have a particular spreadsheet we use all the time, and it gets updated frequently.
As long as we print it to the same PDF file name each time, when we open the DWG, we always get the latest version....

Thanks! I Like that idea. It will help to keep my tree debit/credit sheets up to date and in synch.

[PinoyAko]

What I've started doing is opening the Excel file, and print it to a PDF, then I xref the PDF into the drawing.

We have a particular spreadsheet we use all the time, and it gets updated frequently.
As long as we print it to the same PDF file name each time, when we open the DWG, we always get the latest version.

haha.. I like this idea.. Perfect