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Copy/Paste and link a portion of an Excel spreadsheet or Word document in a drawing

This procedure differs from "Inserting and Linking an Excel spreadsheet or Word document in a drawing". This procedure uses the copy and paste commands to copy only a portion of a document into a drawing.

Open the drawing that you want to copy the document into, and the document itself.
 

Copying the portion of the document

In Excel or Word:

  • Select the area of the document to be copied into drawing.

  • Select the Copy command.  The area is copied into the clipboard.

Pasting the contents of the clipboard into the drawing

If you are operating in Land Desktop you must use the menu palette for either AutoCAD Map 2000 or Land Desktop 3 Complete.

  • From the Main Menu select Edit.

  • From the Pull Down Menu select Paste Special.

  • In the Paste Special dialog box, check the Paste or Paste Link boxes.

Checking the Paste Link box allows edits within Excel or Word to automatically update the pasted area inside AutoCAD.

You will also be able to left double click on the pasted area in AutoCAD to open Excel or Word and perform edits. AutoCAD automatically detects the source (format) of the data that is in the clipboard. This routine is based on a Word file being the source document.

When Paste is checked, you will have several formats to choose from when pasting the contents of the clipboard into the drawing.

Experimenting is needed here to determine the best format. Each format has its' pros and cons.
 

Moving the document in the drawing

The document will never come into the drawing at the exact size or location you want. You can change its location by holding down the left mouse button on the file and dragging it.
 

Adjusting the text and document size

You will notice the document has grips on each corner and the centers of each edge. These are used to drag the document to a different size, effecting the text size also.

CAUTION: use only the grips on the corners. Using the grips on the top, bottom, or sides will skew the text. Since the inserted document does not inherit the properties of the current AutoCAD text style, you may want to place an example of the desired text size nearby so you can compare sizes.

Editing the document

Left double click on the document in AutoCAD to open it in the appropriate application. When you save the edited document, the document in AutoCAD will also be updated (assuming you checked the Link box).
 

Limitations

There are limitations in AutoCAD for the number of lines or rows of text that can be inserted from another application. You may need to break the document into smaller documents to defeat this limitation.
 

Plot quality

When you plot the drawing, you may notice the quality is not satisfactory. Do the following to adjust the plot quality.

In AutoCAD:

  • Right click on the document.

  • From the pop-up menu, select Properties.

  • In the OLE Properties dialog box, select one of the options from the OLE plot quality window.

Documents containing text will plot best if the OLE plot quality is set to Text (e.g., text document) or Line art (e.g., spreadsheet).

Plotters may react differently to these settings.

If you have a program setting or customization that you would like to share with other users via this web page, you may contact Gary Vandawalker.
 

Contact Information

You may send comments regarding this Web site to:

State Conservation Engineer

Peter E. Wright
Syracuse, New York
Telephone: 315-477-6538

If you encounter any problems with this page, have questions, suggestions, or find a broken link, please contact Gary Vandawalker at 315-477-6546.

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