Schedule export from Revit 2021

[JoshJonesNZ]

Hi all,

Currently having issues with projects that have been upgraded to Revit 2021. When exporting a schedule (.txt file) this no longer imports as expected to Microsoft Excel. In the previous versions (I have tested this again today with 2019) I was able to export a schedule as .txt, then drag and drop this into excel for quick manipulation. Revit 2021 adds all data to one column. I have shown examples below. Both exports have the exact same settings from Revit. There are work arounds to this issue, but I would appreciate any assistance in fixing the "usual" way. My team export many schedules per week, so a fix would be a time saver. 

Thank you,

[barthbradley]

Are you checking Delimited when you Import into Excel?  

[barthbradley]

[JoshJonesNZ]

Hey, 

Yes I am, and this does work to import in the separated columns, my question was more directed toward my teams use of the drag and drop method ( .txt file into Excel). This is what causes the error presented in the screenshots. Importing the file manually will resolve the issue, but the much quicker method of "drag and drop" does not work.

[barthbradley]

Are you doing this by way of an Add-In in 2019 that is not in 2021.  

[JoshJonesNZ]

Hey, 

No, just the standard inbuilt export tool in Revit. I have attached a screenshot below. This is the same in both versions. 

Cheers,

[barthbradley]

Yah, you're right.  

FWIW: https://apps.autodesk.com/RVT/en/Detail/Index?id=5141672835013457165

[kap-bimsupport]

Hey Team - Any resolution on this yet? 

We're confirming the same behavior but found it made a difference to do the following:

1.  Open the exported txt file

2.  Save it as .txt with "UTF_16LE" encoding

3.  Then open it in excel.

[kap-bimsupport]

The default .txt export setting out of 2021 seems to be set to .txt encoding as "UFT-8 with BOM"

[RPTHOMAS108]

The format did change but Excel can deal with that.

If you save as .csv or set the delimiter to comma instead of tab then the files should still open by dropping onto Excel. The advantage of using the csv extension is that this is usually already associated with Excel so you can also double click the file to open it with Excel.

I think the real key is the delimiter used. When  you select .csv it will set it to comma (since that is the c in csv). When you export to txt it defaults to tab.

When you use comma you should also use a text qualifier (unless you don't have commas in your fields). The downside of using text qualifier seems to be that Revit also wrongly uses them for numerical values and these then end up as text in Excel (however they can be easily converted there).

I'm actually a bit surprised it's been said that you could drop a tab delimited file onto Excel and it would open. Tab delimited was always my first choice because you can't have tabs in parameter values. I'm sure however that excel never opened those directly and you would have to use text import wizard as above.