Chapter 1 — Overview

Features and Benefits

Microsoft Office Importer for AutoCAD is an AutoCAD productivity tool that can paste large amounts of spreadsheet data and text from Microsoft Excel and Word files into AutoCAD drawing files with exceptional formatting and a link back to the source file so the data in the drawing can be automatically kept up to date.

There are many benefits, which include:

• Eliminating the need for manual entry or manipulation of text in AutoCAD that exists in Microsoft Excel and Word files.

• Maintaining links to source documents with ability to update imported data automatically or on demand.
• Split pastes into multiple columns in your DWG file easily to ensure the paste fits into your border without having to make unnecessary additional pastes.
• See the contents of your paste live while making your paste.
• Maintaining formatting like italics, bold and underline.
• Clean, predictable, presentation-quality output in AutoCAD.
• Importing large blocks of information with a single paste.
• Automatic mapping of Microsoft fonts to AutoCAD fonts
• Stacked fraction support
• Exact mapping of Microsoft Excel/Word point size to AutoCAD text size (drawing units)
• Options to use symbology of the source document, AutoCAD active attributes, or individual selection of color, weight and level for the pasted text with separate options including line style for pasted borders.
• Ability to use the {Browse} button to locate a missing source file and change a link to point to the source file at a new location.
• Ability to store links to source documents as relative paths or as absolute paths.
• Many settings and pasting options, which provide you the freedom to make a paste look exactly the way you want.

Note: See the “New Features and Fixes” section of this guide for a complete description of the latest enhancements!

Microsoft Office Importer for AutoCAD can be used with all kinds of data, such as equipment schedules, summaries, bills of material, various quantity sheets and more.

The “Paste…” box

When pasting data from Word or Excel files, the title bar of the “paste” box will change to clearly show which type of data you are pasting into AutoCAD. For Word, this title bar will read “Paste Word data into AutoCAD” and, for Excel, this title bar will read “Paste Excel data into AutoCAD”. Additionally, when referring to the “paste” box in this guide, it will always be referred to as the “Paste Excel data into AutoCAD” box unless we are specifically dealing with Word data.

Definition of the word “clipboard”

The word “clipboard” when used in the Microsoft Office Importer for AutoCAD interface or in this guide, is defined as follows:

A temporary memory area used to transfer information within a document being edited or between documents or between programs. The fundamental operations are “cut” which moves data from a document to the clipboard, “copy” which copies it to the clipboard and “paste” which inserts the clipboard contents into the current document in place of the current selection.

 

Chapter 2 →