Excel table in Inventor DWG does not show in DWF?!?!?!

[miechh]

I'm not sure if the installation of service-pack 2 is the cause for this problem, but before that there was no problem. The problem: I have several (excel) tables in my drawing. For the simple cause that Excel-tables are much easier to design than the generic tables in Inventor. Those tables have to be copied and pasted into the Inventor dwg. When checking in the drawing (.dwg) into the Vault, the drawing and the table should be visible, but now the table(s) is/are missing!! The problem is reproducable; when I create a new (empty) drawing, insert an Excel-table and export the drawing to DWFx manually, the table has gone in the DWFx!

It's essential that the tables are visible in the DWFx because of the revision and Engineering change-order workflow! I'm curious if other Inventor users are experiencing the same problem and, more important, if there's a solution!

Inventor dwg with table:

DWFx without table?!??!?!?!?

[cbenner]

Question, why do these tables need to be copied & pasted in Inventor?  Inventor allows for you to link a table to an Excel file right from the ribbon tool.  Not sure if this would make a difference in your DWF or not.

[mcgyvr]

FWIW.. A "paste special" excel table shows just fine in INV 2015 when exported to dxfx.

[miechh]

We have a specific layout in those tables, which can not be reproduced by the generic tables in Inventor.

[miechh]

Well, I'm not sure how you did that, but with me even the most simple excel-table doesn't show up in the DWFx.

F.Y.I. My colleague has the same problem on his workstation (which has the same specifications, also service pack 2 installed).

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi miechh,

It looks like Service Pack 2 for Inventor 2014 broke something related to embedded items and getting them exported to a PDF or DWF. Here is a related link, but at the current time there appears not to be a solution:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticl...

If this is critical for you, then un-installing SP2 temporarily might be something to consider.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[DeerSpotter]

create a .bat file and run as administrator

cd C:\

cd C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\Bin32\

ApprenticeRegSvr.exe

cd C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Moldflow\bin\

bootstrap.exe

cd C:\

cd C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\bin\

ApprenticeRegSvr.exe
RegisterTaskScheduler.exe
RegisterCentaur.exe
RegisterAssemblyStressAnalysis.exe
ServiceModule.exe



pause

and try this if the above didnt work

echo BEGIN DRAG-AND-DROP %n1 REGISTRAR FOR 64-BIT SYSTEMS
copy %1 C:\Windows\System32
regsvr32 "%nx1"
echo END BATCH FILE
pause

oh and some other ones i used in the past for dxf related problems: 

cd "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin"

regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\DWGExt.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\DWFOut.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\Trans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\JTTrans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\UGTrans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\PSTrans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\DWFOut.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\RhinoTrans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\RVTTranslator.Application.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\SatTrans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\SWTrans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\Trans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\STLTrans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\MarkupManager.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\iDrop.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\HSIDF10.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\CCItemTranslator.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\ArubaTrans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\CATV4Trans.dll"
regsvr32.exe "C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Inventor 2014\Bin\CATV5Trans.dll"

[miechh]

For us it's pretty important (can't imagine it isn't for others) that those excel tables are visible in the dwf's, because they contain critical (legal) data for the design of our products, and they need to be evaluated by multiple persons in and outside our organisation.

So for now I decided to uninstall SP2 which seems to work. Noticed that the problem has been noted by Autodesk, hope they'll come up with a solution soon.

Thanks for now!

[ChrisMitchell01]

Sorry for the delay - I just tested a fix for this issue. It should be live within the next 24hrs.

-Chris

[ChrisMitchell01 · Accepted solution]

This fix is now available from http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/downloads/caas/downloads/content/hotfix-inv1...

Sorry for the inconvience,
Chris

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi ChrisMitchell01,

Your link seems to be redirecting to a MS Outlook Web App login page, rather than going to the knowledge base article.

Here is the link that I think you intended to provide:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/downloads/caas/downloads/content/hotfix-inv1...

Also, could you add the link to the hotfix to this support page:

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/inventor-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticl...

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[ChrisMitchell01]

You're too quick for me, Curtis  Just noticed that myself - stupid cut'n'paste problem from Outlook !

I've requested that support page be updated accordingly.

Thanks

Chris

[nathan.gaff]

I know this is an old thread and Chris may no longer be around, but this problem still exists in Inventor 2016. At least it has since we updated to Windows 10. We started getting a lot of new errors after that. 

Is there any chance we can get a new hotfix, or a link to a solution I'm not finding? 
We use Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit (10.0, Build 15063) and Inventor Professional 2016, Build 236, Release 2016.2.7.

Thanks.

[ChrisMitchell01]

@nathan.gaff

I'm not aware of this issue recurring again; I'll see what I can find out....

I assume you still have a version of Excel installed locally as opposed to one of the hosted versions available through Office 365 ?

Do you have a system environment variable set called UseLibXL ? (Some people set that to improve the performance of excel based interactions). If so, does removing the variable help ?

Can you attach a simple example drawing & referenced Excel file for investigation please ?

Thanks
Chris

[nathan.gaff]

@ChrisMitchell01  Sure thing. I've attached a simple dwg, its linked Excel file, and the offending dwfx. As simple as can be, really. 

You are right about our local Excel. We are running Excel 2010. 
The UseLibXL environment variable is not set, however. 

In the meantime, I did discover a workaround. If the spreadsheet is inserted as an OpenDocument spreadsheet instead of the traditional Excel spreadsheet, it shows up just fine. And, without LibreOffice installed, Excel opens the spreadsheet by default. It behaves exactly the same as far as I've seen so far, except that it shows up in our dwf and dwfx files. 

Thanks for the response. 

[ChrisMitchell01]

Good that you found a workaround - This all seems to work OK on our test machines....

Your comments are a bit confusing though; if you simply double click an xlsx file from windows explorer I assume it opens in Excel & not LibreOffice ?

Thanks

Chris

[nathan.gaff]

Correct. Windows opens .ods (LibreOffice spreadsheet) files in Excel by default. And, opened in Excel, they seem to function exactly like Excel's native file type, though I've only made tables so far.

We started noticing the missing tables on our .dwf files around the time we upgraded to Windows 10. Not completely sure if that was the cause, since it took us a while to notice, but everyone in the office who has tested this since has the same problem.

It's up to you if this is worth pursuing. The workaround is as good as the original as far as I'm concerned. 

Nathan