Importing an Excel file into Archicad? How?

[rob2218]

what's the best to import an OEM file like Excel or a word doc into archicad???

[TMA_80]

AFAIK, since archicad 10, as a PDF file only.

[rob2218]

wow....Really? such a sophisticated program and you can only import PDF's or JPGS but no XCL files??? wow....bummer.
would've been nice to work "ON" the actual XCL file right inside the archicad PLN file. so I guess each time you'd have to open the XCL file, edit it, then print to PDF and simply overwrite (rename with the same name) the PDF that is already taking the place holder in the archicad file?

[Karl Ottenstein]

rob2218 wrote:
what's the best to import an OEM file like Excel or a word doc into archicad???

It depends on your needs.

The earlier option on Windows machines of dynamically linking to an Excel file (via OLE) is long gone.

Saving the file as PDF and inserting that as TMA_80 suggests is the most typical method.

If you want to edit the text in ArchiCAD ... and no longer want the Excel sheet as the data source ... you can paste the contents and a rich text entry will be created.

At least on the Mac side, copying and pasting directly from Excel does not produce a tab-delimited result, though. You have to save as 'tab delimited text' from Excel, open that in TextEdit, copy from there, and paste into ArchiCAD ... then select all text and set your tab stops to get things aligned into columns again ... and then fix your formatting. Whew. You can see why PDF is generally the way to go. 😉

[Karl Ottenstein]

rob2218 wrote:
wow....Really? such a sophisticated program and you can only import PDF's or JPGS but no XCL files??? wow....bummer.
would've been nice to work "ON" the actual XCL file right inside the archicad PLN file. so I guess each time you'd have to open the XCL file, edit it, then print to PDF and simply overwrite (rename with the same name) the PDF that is already taking the place holder in the archicad file?

XCL got me confused. Excel files are XLS 😉

But, yes, that would be the normal workflow. The updated PDF will show up in ArchiCAD ... the 'placed' PDF will be a link to the external file.