excel paste special to autocad entities

[david.marr]

I have searched all of the excel to AutoCAD entities topics and no one has addressed the issue I'm having. When I select my table info in excel, then go into AutoCAD and pastespec to AutoCAD entities, the table comes in, but the text in the table is A., wrong size, B., Wrong font, and C., the wrong color. I've tried setting excel to system font, and I set my desired table style as current, still get text that is the font and size from excel and the color 0,0,0 which is black. see attached screenshots.

[pendean]

Did you remember to set up a custom TableStyle first and make it your default, with all of your settings etc.?

[david.marr]

Yes, that is the second image I attached. by default do you mean set as current style?

[david.marr]

Still looking for some assistance on this. If I have to go through and manually change the font size, type and color in each cell, there's no use in using it.

[pendean]

Most of us with content already in Excel simply leave it there and link to it in our DWG files: we avoid having duplicate information in two or more different files/locations like the plague.

[david.marr]

Even if I link to it, it does not meet our standards. Our standards are simplex font, with a 22 degree slant, color depends on text size (we use .ctb's) so when I plot this it will not meet our standards. I guess using tables is not an option for our firm.

[leeminardi]

What specific fonts are you using in Excel and are they OpenType, TrueType, or AutoCAD shx fonts?  What version of AutoCAD are you using?

The copy/paste special process works fine for me with AutoCAD 2019 using Arial or Times New Roman fonts in Excel/AutoCAD.  Both of these fonts are OpenType fonts.  Simplex is an old AutoCAD stick font that doesn't work well for me in Excel.

[pendean]

AutoCAD stick fonts do not exist is Excel, and not at a 22-degree slant. AutoCAD installed TTF versions of those stick fonts, did you try those yet?

In the meantime if you want... Post a DWG file, ensure all is set up and with a table and defined tablestyle in it per all of our discussions previously, let's see your work.
Include your Excel spreadsheet.

[david.marr]

I've tried everything on the excel side, from system, to simplex, if I use simplex, I can get the font correct, but the ' and " characters come in as Arial. but no matter what I try I can't get the color correct. It always comes in whatever color the text is set to in excel and it's set in the mtext property, so just changing the cell properties doesn't work. Is it possible to just bring the text in as plain text and not m-text? I am using AutoCAD ACA 2019 and excel 365.


[cid:image001.png@01D4ADA5.949EC830]

[pendean]

You have to come to the forum and reply to post images and files.

FWIW Office365 and AutoCAD do not play well together: that may be an added problem you got.

[david.marr]

I wondered about the image files pasted into an e-mail reply, here is the file. As for your comments about trying different fonts, our standard is the simplex.shx at the 22 degree slant, our CAD committee is working on making a change, but the way that goes, it'll be another 5 years before we dive into the world of true type fonts.

I can see 365 and autoCAD not playing well together as the reason.

[pendean]

Thanks for the picture that we've seen already: looking or your actual DWG file with the problem table in it plus your actual Excel spreadsheet that it came from.

[david.marr]

Here is the sample I have been trying to get to work. we use many different schedules most of which are created in excel by engineers. this is just a small footing schedule, most of them are 10 times this size, so a cut and paste, or even a link, would be great, but we need to adhere to our antiquated standards.

[pendean]

You are using C3D? Your DWG file has C3D footprints in it.

[david.marr]

No, but I do have C3d on my machine, but that drawing is from a fresh 2019 ACA install, I rarely use C3D. How do you know there is C3D "footprints"?

[pendean]

Thanks for the files: I get it now I think, you want AutoCAD to fix your Excel formatting. Never going to happen.

Your Excel is not formatted correctly to match your AutoCAD TableStyle; text is too large for the body of the text, cells are not wide enough to accommodate your header text size etc.

Excel also does not understand "header" label you assigned in TABLSTYLE command since you are not using headers in Excel. You will need to assign them after the fact in this case.

There is a lot to fix in the Excel template first before you can start using this ability.

Other factors for simply linking that may be against you all is this https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-forum/link-excel-to-autocad-dwg-excel-file-format-not-recogni...

[pendean]

ZOMBIEKILLER is a free app from the App store, reveals every AutoCAD variant (and add-ons) that has touched any DWG file.

[david.marr]

Interesting, I wonder how C3D got in there. I haven't used it in over 3 months and I just created that file a few weeks ago..from as I said 2019 ACA. My C3D is 2017. But thanks I'll look that up.

[david.marr]

Nope, thats not what my problem is. The problem is the text coming in from excel is formatted into the mtext entity inside the cell. Therefore, the cell properties are overwritten by the imported text and each cell has to be manually changed by going into the mtext editor. as for the cell size and the "types" of cells, that doesn't matter, that can easily be adjusted in autocad. in the link you sent me, I did notice the 64-bit vs 32-bit issue and checked my 365, it is 32 bit. so maybe that has something to do with it? but unlike the issue in that link, I can connect to the excel files. I think if autocad would just bring the text in as regular "dtext" it would be fine.

[jggerth · Accepted solution]

Look for a LISP routine called StripMText, and run that against the imported table.  That shuld let you eliminate the cell-level Mtext over-rides