datalink - Cell forced to excel font - "Start with Excel format..." broken?

[Sportyyyy]

For background, I've been using datalinked excel tables since their inception in 2008.  I found them buggy initially, but they functioned wonderfully in 2013.

For all of our projects, we have been creating them with the formatting option "Start with Excel Format, do not update".  This function appears entirely broken now.

Issues I've found:

1. There is no longer a pop up dialog to alert the user if a datalink needs updating
2. If you override the text style in a cell (I've tried making it STANDARD, ARIAL, VERDANA, SIMPLEX, ROMANS), the displayed font does not change and appears frozen to whatever was saved in the excel file.
3. If you update the datalinks in the drawing, even if "start with excel format, do not update" is selected, any font format changes in the excel file will come into the drawing (in acad, if the cell has been forced to text style with a width factor, that width factor will display).

• Tried unlocking (content and fomat) a cell to see what was going on - it appears though it takes on the text style specified in the table style (or whatever was selected in a cell override), the actual font has been forced to whatever was last saved in the excel file.

Removing Property Overrides will reset the cell to the font size and style specified in the table style BUT the table will still only display the font last saved in the excel file.

FYI, tried all of this with an XLSX file, same results.  I am using C3D 2014 SP1 x64; MS Office x86 (32-bit) - don't think that is the problem since it didn't cause a problem with C3D 2013 x64? 

Anybody come across any solutions?

[Sportyyyy]

I'm totally screwed, aren't I?

[Anonymous]

And yes, "DATALINKNOTIFY" is set to "2". ("Sportyyyy" is my non-work userID).

[Anonymous]

I've been encountering the same problem repeatedly with AutoCAD 2014. Did you ever find a solution?

[kirish]

I have similar problems with updating Excel datalinks in 2010 & 2015. However, it only happens when the drawing is first opened. Once I fix the formatting (changing the text height and cell alignment back), I can update the table just fine...so long as the drawing session is still open. But saving your changes goes out the window once the drawing is closed. I've tried all the Cell Format options in Datalink Manager (editing the link) and none have had any effect at stopping the loss of formatting. And the loss isn't the entire table, it's only the last few rows in the table. (odd?) This happens on other drawings as well; so it's not just one drawring that's having issues. It did it on 2010 and when we switched to 2015 it still has the same problem. I've tried creating a new worksheet in Excel and a new file, still has issues. When the drawing is opened it changes the text height (larger) and the cell alignment. Very annoying since I have to remember to manually edit the table every time the drawing is opened before publishing.