May 13, 2012

You are here: Home / AutoCAD / AutoCAD Tips / Why I can’t Use Formula in xls Created by Data Extraction?

Why I can’t Use Formula in xls Created by Data Extraction?

July 16, 2009 By 1 Comment

data extraction table

Have you used AutoCAD data extraction? This is a very handy tool to create a report about any data from your AutoCAD drawing. Some of my colleague choose to extract the drawings information to excel instead of directly to his drawing. They want to modify the values further, and using excel is easier (and faster).

But here comes the problem: when he tried to sum any column, he can’t get excel to calculate the values. What’s wrong?

Apparently, AutoCAD export all the data to text strings, not numbers. That’s why you can’t get them calculated.

To fix this is easy:

  1. Select all the cells contain your data in excel, click copy on the ribbon (or press [ctrl] + C) to copy them to clipboard.
  2. Open notepad, paste them here.
  3. Select all (you can press [ctrl] + A) then copy this value to clipboard.
  4. Paste them back in excel.

Now your formula should works ;)

Advertisement

You might also interested to

  1. Create a Report Table with Data Extraction
  2. How to: embed image to AutoCAD drawing
  3. How to: trim and copy objects within a boundary
  4. Reporting Multiple Coordinates in A Block using Attribute Extraction
  5. Command line only express tools: Have you used them?

Search for more articles

Custom Search
Filed Under: AutoCAD Tips, AutoCAD Troubleshoot
About Edwin Prakoso

Edwin works as an Application Engineer in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has 4 years experience in building industry, then start to work for Autodesk reseller.
He is certified as Revit Architecture 2010 certified professional and CATIA V5 part design specialist. Currently he is involved as team leader for implementing SmarTeam as PDM in several companies.
You can reach him on twitter @cad_notes. You can also connect with him on LinkedIn. If you prefer email, reach him at edwin.prakoso@cad-notes.com.

  • http://cadbloke.com/ Ewen

    You can also use "Paste Special" to get around this in Excel.

    1. Copy a cell with "1" in it. It can be formatted as text – that doesn't matter.
    2. Highlight all the cells with numbers in them you with to treat as numbers.
    3. Edit -> Paste Special -> Multiply.
    4. Rejoice!