Attribute export and import with excel

[stephen.manila]

Just starting off with creating bills of material using exporting attributes and importing attributes from excel, I think I have gotten the hang of it, well at least the basic. For some reason though the "descriptions" are importing with quotation marks at the beginning and end, also sometime adding to a measurements. Odd thing it's only the the descriptions column qty and part number import fine... not sure if it's the format of that particular column? Or if it is something with the dialogue box when first exporting the attributes. Below are screenshots of what I fill into my exported file, and the result of when I import the .txt file. 

[TheCADnoob · Accepted solution]

The quotes are being added by excel. 

There are a couple work arounds but the one that best suits you depends on the content in the attributes. 

One 'simple' way is to replace all instances of quotes in the drawing with another character or string (replace " with some string not used anywhere else in the drawing like [:] ) using the FIND command prior to ATTOUT. Then making your changes in the excel file and importing with ATTIN and then reversing the character replacement with the find command. 

 

[stephen.manila]

thanks for the help, i will have to try it out. i do find it odd that it's that one column and not any of the others though. plus what i am importing is copy pasted into the column for description etc., i am not exporting any data or information from the attributes beside (the item number value) for each attribute. so description and catalog/pn is blank with (-). strange.

[TheCADnoob]

It happens when excel saves the file. If you reopen the txt file after saving from excel you will see the extra quotes. It looks like it happens any time excel sees a quote, even if its used to demark units. 

The problem is also captured in the following link. There are some other ways around it which com from the excel side of things. You can see here that people have created scripts for excel to export the file. https://excel.tips.net/T002237_Getting_Rid_of_Extra_Quote_Marks_in_Exported_Text_Files.html#:~:text=...