Chapter 5 — Using Microsoft Office Importer

Starting Microsoft Office Importer

After installation, Microsoft Office Importer’s “Axiom” ribbon tab displays automatically.

Microsoft Office Importer’s Ribbon Group

Microsoft Office Importer’s ribbon has four buttons:

1. Paste Clipboard — Paste clipboard data into AutoCAD
2. Edit Source — Edit a linked source document
3. Manage Link — Manage link to source document
4. Settings — Microsoft Office Importer Settings

The following sections describe each of these buttons.

Paste Clipboard — Paste clipboard data into AutoCAD

When you press the {Paste Clipboard} button, Microsoft Office Importer will open the “Paste Excel [or Word] data into AutoCAD” box and allow you to paste the contents of your computer’s clipboard into your drawing file as real mtext and line elements, inside one or more blocks.

Note: The title bar will indicate if you are pasting Excel data “Paste Excel data into AutoCAD” or Word data “Paste Word data into AutoCAD”.

When this box appears and there is Microsoft Word or Excel data on the clipboard, you can paste with as little as a single data point in the drawing file.

Adding/Removing Rows in Excel After Pasting Into Your DWG

If you want rows added in Excel to increase the pasted area shown your DWG, your options are:

• Select All when you copy from Excel. Note that you must truly select everything in your Excel worksheet — even the blank columns and rows. Excel’s top-left button () does this for you, or you can press {Ctrl-A} (but sometimes this requires two presses to truly select everything).
• Use a named cell range when you copy from Excel.

The data in AutoCAD will grow the next time that paste is updated by Microsoft Office Importer. For example, if you added four rows in Excel, the data shown in the DWG would grow by four rows.

If you want rows added in Excel to not be added to the pasted information in AutoCAD, your option is:

• Don't paste from an Excel named range and don't paste from a “Select All” cell range (the whole spreadsheet).

Note: If you do a finite selection range that’s not a named range, you can change the linked-to cell range in Microsoft Office Importer’s Manage box at any time.

• This is also described in the following table, for quick reference:

	What Was Pasted From Excel
After adding/removing a row in Excel and updating the pasted data in DWG:	Select All	Named Range	Finite Cell Range
Cell range in DWG will grow automatically.	Yes	Yes	No
Cell range in DWG will not grow automatically. Information may be pushed off the bottom of the pasted data in DWG. Potential for omitted data in DWG.	No	No	Yes

 

Tip: To learn about named Excel cell ranges, see this web page: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Define-and-use-names-in-formulas-4d0f13ac-53b7-422e-afd2-abd7ff379c64#bmquickly_name_a_cell_or_range_of_cells

Adding/Removing Data in Word Document After Pasting Into DWG

After adding/removing data inside the scope of Microsoft Office Importer’s OLE_LINKn* bookmark in your Word document and then updating the linked data in your DWG, the range of the pasted Word data in your DWG pointing to that Word bookmark will grow/reduce automatically. Unlike Excel pastes, there are no exceptions to this as Microsoft Office Importer uses a Word bookmark to define its paste range.

* Where n represents a number starting at 1 and going up by 1 each time a unique area is copied/pasted from that document using Microsoft Office Importer.

Edit Source — Edit a linked source document

Use this to instantly edit the linked source file (Excel spreadsheet or Word document) in Excel or Word.

Manage Link — Manage link to source document

After you press the {Manage} button on the ribbon, click on any element of the paste you want to manage. Then you will see the “Manage Microsoft Office Importer Link” box with various options for modifying one existing linked Microsoft Office Importer paste in a DWG file.

List of Links — List all links in active model

The {List of Links} button opens a box containing a list of all the Microsoft Office Importer links found in your current tab (layout or model space). You can interact with and manipulate the links in various ways from this box. You can select one or multiple links at one time and you can right-click on them or use the visible buttons along the bottom of the box. {Ctrl-A} selects all links in the list.

To have this box open every time you start Title Block Manager, toggle ON Settings | Change Settings… | List of Links | [x] Automatically display list of links box on startup.

Settings — Microsoft Office Importer Settings

The {Settings} button will bring up the Microsoft Office Importer Settings box, which is described in a later section of this guide. Microsoft Office Importer has many options that allow you to place documents with the settings and symbology that you want.

Default location of Microsoft Office Importer’s INI file

Microsoft Office Importer’s settings are stored in an INI file, which will be saved in the following folder by default:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Axiom\OfficeACOfficeAc\OfficeACOfficeAc.ini

But Microsoft Office Importer lets you create and use INI files with any name in any folder. The path to the last-used INI file is stored in the following Windows registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Axiom\OfficeAc\Settings\Path