Embedded Excel File Overwrites Existing Logo Image in Drawing Sheet

[JanekPop]

I have inserted Excel spreadsheets into Drawing Sheets quite a few times without a problem.  On a couple of occasions howvere, I have found that our company logo, part of the drawing sheet title block, has been overwritten by a copy of the embedded sheet (see attached image).  So the Excel object I have inserted is in two places.  

I can't delete the occurrence in the block without the one in the proper placing deleting too.

Has anyone had this problem and cured it?  I did not notice this of course until I had filled my table with data, so I'm not keen on starting from scratch or moving things to another drawing.

Thanks, Janek, Inventor 2017

[Cris-Ideas]

Had exactly the same issue.

I reported this bug with customer support, but as I recall did not get any real help.

So to resolve this issue I have copied title block from another idw where it was showing the image as originally designed. If you do not have other idw with this title block you can try to look in oldversions.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Cris and Jane,

This is absolutely a bug. Based on the described behavior, it sounds like the OLE link got corrupted. It means that the OLE object stored in the title block is gone somehow. This can be Inventor related or Windows related. It is hard to tell. Regardless, something is wrong and I don't believe anybody would deliberately add an Excel table to titleblock.

If you can reproduce the behavior, please let me know.

Many thanks!

[Cris-Ideas]

@johnsonshiue 

in my case Excel table replaced embeded image. So Image in the title block was not OLE object (I think)

If you have the corrupted idw is it not possible to debug that?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Cris,

I think the title block image is also OLE. Any non-native Inventor file linking is done via OLE. The corrupted drawing may help. But, it would be very difficult to tell why the corruption happened in the first place. There got to be a workflow leading to the behavior. The trick is to find it.

Many thanks!

[JanekPop]

Thanks for the replies. I'll certainly look out for it happening again, and try and remember the events leading up to it.

[Cris-Ideas]

Hi Johnson,

I thought that if you have a simple data set that gives the bad result it is quite easy to check why one object appears where the other should be.

If there should be an image in the title block and this image is embedded, so data displayed in this area should come from certain location where image is encoded. But if instead of the image excel table is displayed it is obvious that data comes from somewhere else, and it should be possible to verify when it is being changed.

As for the workflow that triggers it is:

1) you have an idw with properly defined title bock containing image that works perfectly fine.

2) you place excel sheet on the sheet.

3) next time you open the drawing images in all title blocks on all sheets are replaced with excel table.

It is extremely time consuming to fix effects of this bug and to get title blocks as they should look. So after encountering this problem once I have resigned from placing excel tables on drawings (also this functionality is not working as used would expect, but this is another long story).

So I could spend time and give you the workflow that leads to this substitution but first you would need to promise that this will be fixed for AI 2021.

When I had this problem I have created support case and provided Autodesk with corrupted idw showing bad behaviour. As far as I remember Customer support member was able to see the problem on his machine.

Case ID 15405212 - Closed Change request 31/05/2019.

Could you please see if there was any progress.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Cris,

I will try to reproduce the corruption. Also, I will work with our support staff to find the latest status to the case (ID 15405212).

Many thanks!

[alexanderboogaard]

@johnsonshiue Can you please give an update on this matter? I know this is an old thread, but it was not marked as solved. Don't want to hijack this post, but I'm currently working on drawings in Inventor 2020.5 and still experience the same behavior as described above with excel tables overwriting logo images, but also experience it with images overwriting other images.

With kind regards,

Alexander Boogaard

[mark]

I had a similar issue with some embedded images overwriting title block logos.

My solution was to open a blank drawing with the same template, then copy the title block from the drawing resources and paste into the drawing resources of the corrupted file. Make sure to select "replace" when prompted. 

Just to note: you must copy from the "Title Blocks" drop down under drawing resources and paste into the drawing resources in the destination (corrupted) file. You can't just copy it from one sheet to another. Hope this helps!

[Cris-Ideas]

I have tried that also but once you want to edit this title bock, even in the new template file, the wrong image is there again.

Cris.

[daveDHTBH]

I have been having exactly the same issues & it has taken me a while to recover from the files. I am resorting to saving more often, restarting Inventor frequently, especially on large drawings with many sheets contained within.

When editing a table reading an xlsx file from the hard drive is when the image on the title block seems to be overwritten most for EVERY drawing sheet in the file.

I am currently using Inventor Pro 2025.1

Dave

[Cris-Ideas]

This thing is already 5 years old.

We can clearly see no progress in solving this bug.

I am even more happy I staid with AI 2021. 🙂

Chris.

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Folks,

Regarding this issue, it was reported as INVGEN-29458. Unfortunately, the defect has not been fixed because it is considered a corruption. It is a bookkeeping error. There are a few signs showing the corruption. First, expand the 3rd-party folder in the Drawing browser. You will see there is only one node showing the embedding object. But if you go to Tools -> Links, you will see multiple entries. Interestingly, you may see duplicate "Embedding Objects."

This should not have happened. Each object should be named uniquely. I think this is the source of the corruption. We need to know how the embedding objects are duplicated.

I also notice another issue. The images associated with a title block should have been inserted via Insert Image command in the 2D Sketch environment. They should not be inserted via "Insert Object" command (OLE workflow).

Unfortunately, the Title Block definition has been corrupted. I suggest either edit the TB definition and insert the image again using Insert Image command in the 2D sketch environment or recreate the TB.

Many thanks!

[alexanderboogaard]

Hi,

thank you for the update. Will check when it happens again.