officev8

User’s Guide

Microsoft® OfficeImporter™ for V8Import spreadsheet and word processing data intoMicroStation with perfect formatting!

Version 8.16

Axiom1805 Drew StreetClearwater, Florida 33765727-442-7774 voice727-442-8344 [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.axiomint.com/

Microsoft Office Importer

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This document was last modified on 27 September 2013 11:20 am.

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expressed or implied, including, but not limited to the implied warranties ofmerchantability and fitness for a particular purpose and the entire risk as to the quality

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MicroStation is a registered trademark of Bentley Systems, Incorporated.Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.TrueType is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.

Office Importer is a trademark of Axiom.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 — Overview------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9Features and Benefits --------------------------------------------------------------------------------9The “Paste…” box --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10

Definition of the word “clipboard” -------------------------------------------------------- 10

Chapter 2 — Installation----------------------------------------------------------------------11Before you install ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11Typical installation from CD --------------------------------------------------------------------- 11Congratulations------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17

Chapter 3 — Uninstalling --------------------------------------------------------------------18Uninstalling Axiom products --------------------------------------------------------------------- 18

Chapter 4 — Quick Start ---------------------------------------------------------------------19Quick Start Objectives----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19Quick Start Objectives----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19

Chapter 5 — Using Microsoft Office Importer ----------------------------------------33Starting Microsoft Office Importer--------------------------------------------------------------- 33Microsoft Office Importer’s Toolbar ------------------------------------------------------------- 33

Paste clipboard data into MicroStation --------------------------------------------------- 33

Paste Excel charts into MicroStation ----------------------------------------------------- 34

Edit a linked source document ------------------------------------------------------------- 34Editing linked source documents which reside in ProjectWise ------------------------ 34

Manage an existing link -------------------------------------------------------------------- 34

List all links in active model --------------------------------------------------------------- 36

Microsoft Office Importer Settings -------------------------------------------------------- 37

Chapter 6 — Pasting clipboard data and Excel charts into MicroStation----38The {Paste clipboard data into MicroStation} tool -------------------------------------------- 38The “Paste Excel data into MicroStation” box ------------------------------------------------- 38

Page width: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 39Width defined by text size on clipboard (Excel and Word)----------------------- 39Define width while placing text (Word only)--------------------------------------- 39Scale proportional to Excel (or Word) data ----------------------------------------- 40

Split paste into columns. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 40Column Flow --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 40


How Column Flow Works ------------------------------------------------------------------ 40Column Offset -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 41Column Origin (Technical Notes)---------------------------------------------------------- 41Automatically Added Columns (Technical Notes)--------------------------------------- 41Text height and width------------------------------------------------------------------------ 42

Text height:------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 42Text width: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 42

Import with a link to the original document. --------------------------------------------- 42Update automatically when design file opens. ------------------------------------------- 42

The {Paste Excel charts into MicroStation} tool ---------------------------------------------- 43The “Paste Excel charts into MicroStation” box ----------------------------------------- 43

Settings already documented --------------------------------------------------------- 43

Chapter 7 — Managing Existing Links --------------------------------------------------44

The {Manage} button ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 44How to use the Manage tool ---------------------------------------------------------------- 44{Apply}---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 45{Edit…} --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 45{Update}--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 45

{Ctrl-Update} --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 46{Cancel} --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 46

The “Link” tab-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 46Three Ways to Locate Linked Documents ------------------------------------------------ 46Source: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 47Update automatically when design file opens. ------------------------------------------- 47Lock pasted elements. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 47Group pasted elements into cells. ---------------------------------------------------------- 47Excel Attributes------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 47

Top-left Cell/Bottom-right Cell------------------------------------------------------- 47Sheet Name------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 47

The “Symbology” tab------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 48Text--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48

Color:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48Weight:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48Style: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48Level:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48

When you do not select color, weight or level… ---------------------------------------- 49Take unselected settings from source document ----------------------------------- 49Take unselected settings from active symbology ---------------------------------- 49

Borders----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 49Additional information on working with linked data------------------------------------------ 50

Rotating or moving linked data------------------------------------------------------------- 50

Chapter 8 — Microsoft Office Importer Settings -------------------------------------51

The {Settings} button ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 51Microsoft Office Importer Settings box --------------------------------------------------------- 51File menu -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 52

Saving your own settings-------------------------------------------------------------------- 52Load Settings... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 53

Table of Contents

Save Settings---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 53Save Settings As...---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 53Save Settings on Exit ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 53Restore Factory Defaults… ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 53Help menu------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 54

Help | Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 54Help | About----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 54

Category --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 55Currently active settings file name--------------------------------------------------------------- 57{Match} --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 57Information field ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 57{OK}------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 57{Cancel}--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 57

Chapter 9 — Text Settings Category-----------------------------------------------------58Text settings----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 58The Font tab----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61

Use same fonts as source document.------------------------------------------------------- 61Set default font-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61Use active font -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61Advanced font mapping --------------------------------------------------------------------- 62{Set All to Normal} -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 62{Set All to Default} -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 62

The “Formatting” tab ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 63Import with V7 text nodes.------------------------------------------------------------------ 64Import stacked fractions from Excel. ------------------------------------------------------ 64Spaces between tab stops:------------------------------------------------------------------- 64Height of a single line will be nnn% of text height. ------------------------------------- 65Symbology ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 65

Color:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 65Weight:----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 65Style: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 65Level:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 65Handling unselected “Symbology” settings ---------------------------------------- 65Take unselected settings from source document ----------------------------------- 66Take unselected settings from active symbology ---------------------------------- 66

Attributes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 66Bold Weight ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 66Italic slant-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 66

The Size tab ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 67Name ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 67Height: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 68Width: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 68

Text ratio lock--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 69{Calculate...}---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 69{Add} ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 69{Remove} ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 70{Update}--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 70{Move Up} and {Move Down} ------------------------------------------------------------ 70

Non-text area height: and Non-text area width:------------------------------------------------ 70Word wrap------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 70


How to compute cell height when pasting from Excel ---------------------------------- 71How to compute cell height when pasting Microsoft Word tables -------------------- 71

The default case------------------------------------------------------------------------- 72When cell height is defined exactly in the source document --------------------- 73When a “minimum height” is defined in the source document ------------------ 74

Chapter 10 — Borders Settings Category----------------------------------------------75Borders Settings Category ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 75Border lines: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 77

As in source ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 77Always ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 77Never------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 77

Import diagonal border lines defined in source. ----------------------------------------------- 77Shift Text in cells by “nn%” of the current line height---------------------------------------- 78

Import filled cells from Excel -------------------------------------------------------------- 78Symbology ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 78

Color: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 78Weight ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 78Style -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 78Level ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 78When you do not select color, weight or line style -------------------------------------- 79

Take un-selected settings from source document. --------------------------------- 79Take un-selected settings from active symbology --------------------------------- 79

Chapter 11 — Pasting Settings Category-----------------------------------------------80Pasting Settings Category ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 80Split paste into columns. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 82

Repeat XLS header of [n] rows in each column.----------------------------------------- 82Show contents while pasting.--------------------------------------------------------------------- 82

Display Mode: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 82Lock pasted elements. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 82Group pasted elements into cells. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 82

Chapter 12 — Linking Settings Category-----------------------------------------------84Linking Settings Category ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 84Create a link to the original document.---------------------------------------------------------- 86Update automatically when design file opens-------------------------------------------------- 86

Set up for automatic updating -------------------------------------------------------------- 87Save source document paths as:------------------------------------------------------------------ 87

The OFFICE_DIRS configuration variable----------------------------------------------- 88When source document is on a network drive:------------------------------------------------- 88

Chapter 13 — Updating Settings Category --------------------------------------------90Updating Settings Category----------------------------------------------------------------------- 90

When user opens new design file or model: ---------------------------------------------- 92When user closes toolbar: ------------------------------------------------------------------- 92

Chapter 14 — List of Links Settings Category----------------------------------------93List of Links Settings Category ------------------------------------------------------------------ 93

Table of Contents

Highlight color:, Highlight line weight:, Highlight line style: ------------------------------- 96

Chapter 15 — ProjectWise Settings Category ----------------------------------------97ProjectWise Settings Category ------------------------------------------------------------------- 97How ProjectWise Support Works ---------------------------------------------------------------- 98

Chapter 16 — Troubleshooting ------------------------------------------------------------99How to calculate text size ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 99Pasting from documents opened via a URL (including documents in MicrosoftSharePoint)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 99Formatting Options -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 99Tables -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------100

In Microsoft Excel, text overlaps cell border--------------------------------------------100In Microsoft Excel, cell contents print on top of each other---------------------------100Microsoft Excel produces other anomalies ----------------------------------------------100Grid lines or borders do not display ------------------------------------------------------101Height of grid lines or text is not exact---------------------------------------------------101

Microsoft Word documents ----------------------------------------------------------------------101My fonts look different after converting design files to V8 format.------------------101Pasting of highly formatted document or document containing numbered lists is notperfect. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------102Numbered lists have no space after the numbers.---------------------------------------102Bullets are imported as fractions ----------------------------------------------------------103Bullets or list numbers lost-----------------------------------------------------------------104Ultra-wide text in DGN file (Character Spacing) ---------------------------------------105Hanging indents overlap.-------------------------------------------------------------------105Text size is inconsistent with original document. ---------------------------------------106Tables in Word documents import with cell height too cramped. --------------------106Paragraph Indenting-------------------------------------------------------------------------106Tabs in Word documents not lining up ---------------------------------------------------107Pasted text is one column of characters. -------------------------------------------------107Deleted text keeps re-appearing. ----------------------------------------------------------107Moved text keeps reverting to previous location.---------------------------------------108The paste does not update after editing the source.-------------------------------------108Linked data contains a visible element at the start--------------------------------------108Italic slant is set to 0 degrees in Microsoft Office Importer’s settings but italicizedtext comes in slanted anyway--------------------------------------------------------------108Field Codes-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------109Special characters print incorrectly -------------------------------------------------------109Clipboard is tied up -------------------------------------------------------------------------109Formatting trouble upgrading very old (c. 2005) pastes created by Microsoft OfficeImporter 3.6b/8.3b --------------------------------------------------------------------------109Other errors/problems not covered here--------------------------------------------------110

Chapter 17 — We’ll Make (Almost) Any Enhancements You Want----------- 111We welcome your suggestions ------------------------------------------------------------------ 111

Chapter 18 — New Features and Fixes------------------------------------------------ 112Version 8.16e — 27 September 2013-----------------------------------------------------------112Version 8.16d — 9 August 2013 ----------------------------------------------------------------112


Version 8.16c — 26 July 2013 ------------------------------------------------------------------112Version 8.16b — 5 July 2013--------------------------------------------------------------------112Version 8.16a — 11 January 2013 --------------------------------------------------------------112Version 8.15c — 8 June 2012 -------------------------------------------------------------------113Version 8.15b — 3 February 2012 --------------------------------------------------------------113Version 8.15a — 20 January 2012 --------------------------------------------------------------113Version 8.14c — 4 November 2011 ------------------------------------------------------------114Version 8.14b — 5 August 2011 ----------------------------------------------------------------114Version 8.14a — 17 June 2011 ------------------------------------------------------------------115Version 8.13b — 10 June 2011------------------------------------------------------------------115Version 8.13a — 13 May 2011 ------------------------------------------------------------------115Version 8.12e — 29 March 2011----------------------------------------------------------------115Version 8.12d — 25 February 2011-------------------------------------------------------------116Version 8.12c — 11 February 2011-------------------------------------------------------------116Version 8.12b — 21 January 2011 --------------------------------------------------------------116Version 8.12a — 22 October 2010--------------------------------------------------------------116Version 8.11e — 8 October 2010 ---------------------------------------------------------------117Version 8.11d — 18 June 2010------------------------------------------------------------------117Version 8.11c — 7 May 2010--------------------------------------------------------------------117Version 8.11b — 5 March 2010 -----------------------------------------------------------------117Version 8.11a — 22 January 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------118Version 8.10a — 30 October 2009--------------------------------------------------------------119Version 8.9a — 29 May 2009 -------------------------------------------------------------------119Version 8.8a — 13 February 2009 --------------------------------------------------------------120Version 8.7d — 16 October 2008 ---------------------------------------------------------------120Version 8.7c — 18 April 2008-------------------------------------------------------------------120Version 8.7b — 27 July 2007--------------------------------------------------------------------121Version 8.7a — 15 June 2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------121Version 8.6b — 12 January 2007 ---------------------------------------------------------------121Version 8.6a — 13 October 2006 ---------------------------------------------------------------122Version 8.5e — 4 August 2006 ------------------------------------------------------------------122Version 8.5d — 10 May 2006 -------------------------------------------------------------------122Version 8.5c — 17 March 2006 -----------------------------------------------------------------122Version 8.5b — 23 September 2005 ------------------------------------------------------------122Version 8.5a — 30 June 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------123Version 8.4a — 17 March 2005 -----------------------------------------------------------------123Version 8.3b — 7 January 2005 -----------------------------------------------------------------123Version 8.3a — 23 December 2004-------------------------------------------------------------123Version 8.2a — 30 September 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------123Version 8.1b — 2 January 2004 -----------------------------------------------------------------124Version 8.1a — 23 October 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------124Version 8.0b — 17 January 2003 ---------------------------------------------------------------125Version 8.0a — 1 July 2002 ---------------------------------------------------------------------125

Chapter 1 — Overview

Chapter 1 — Overview

Features and BenefitsMicrosoft Office Importer is a MicroStation productivity tool that can paste largeamounts of spreadsheet data and text from Microsoft Excel and Word files intoMicroStation design files with exceptional formatting.

There are many benefits, which include:

• Eliminating the need for manual entry or manipulation of text in MicroStation thatexists in Microsoft Excel and Word files.

• Import and link Excel charts into your MicroStation design files.

• Maintaining links to source documents with ability to update imported dataautomatically or on demand.

• Maintaining formatting like italics, bold and underline.

• Clean, predictable, presentation-quality output in MicroStation.

• Importing large blocks of information with a single paste.

• Split pastes into multiple columns in your DGN file easily to ensure the paste fits intoyour border without having to make unnecessary additional pastes.

• See the contents of your paste live while making your paste.

• Automatic mapping of Microsoft fonts to MicroStation fonts

• Stacked fraction support

• Support for Unicode fonts in Excel, allowing you to import text with fonts such asGreek, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic into your design files.

• Exact mapping of Microsoft Excel/Word point size to MicroStation text size (masterunits)

• Pasted paragraphs are easily editable text nodes.

• Options to use symbology of the source document, MicroStation active symbology,or individual selection of color, weight and level for the pasted text with separateoptions including line style for pasted borders.

• Microsoft Office Importer uses 92% less disk space than trying to use nativeMicroStation commands to import the same text.

• Ability to use the <Browse> button to locate a missing source file and change a linkto point to the source file at a new location.

• Ability to store links to source documents as absolute paths, relative paths andwithout any path (file name only).


• Ability to define a list of search paths for linked source documents (with theconfiguration variable OFFICE_DIRS)

• Many settings and pasting options that allow you the freedom to make a paste lookexactly as you want.

Note: See the “New Features and Fixes” section of this guide for a complete descriptionof the latest enhancements!

Microsoft Office Importer uses RTF (Rich Text Format) data from the clipboard. Anyword processor or spreadsheet software that copies information to the clipboard in RTFformat can theoretically work with Microsoft Office Importer although it was specificallybuilt and optimized for Microsoft’s Excel, Access and Word applications.

Microsoft Office Importer can be used with all kinds of data such as EquipmentSchedules, Bill of Materials, Tabular Data, Room Finish, Conduit/Panel/Motor Schedulesto name just a few.

Microsoft Office Importer is compatible with MicroStation V8 in Windows 2000, XP andVista. It supports Microsoft Office 97, 2000, 2003 and 2007.

The “Paste…” boxWhen pasting data from Word or Excel files, the title bar of the “paste” box will changeto clearly show which type of data you are pasting into MicroStation. For Word, this titlebar will read “Paste Word data into MicroStation” and, for Excel, this title bar will read“Paste Excel data into MicroStation”. Additionally, when referring to the “paste” box, itwill always be referred to as the “Paste Excel data into MicroStation” box unless we arespecifically dealing with Word data.

There is a “Page width:” option when pasting that refers Word or Excel depending onwhich you are pasting into MicroStation. This option will read and appear as “Scaleproportional to Excel data” throughout the document unless Word data is specificallybeing referred to.

Definition of the word “clipboard”The word “clipboard” when used in the Microsoft Office Importer interface or in thisUser’s Guide, is defined as follows:

A temporary memory area used to transfer information within a document being edited orbetween documents or between programs. The fundamental operations are “cut” whichmoves data from a document to the clipboard, “copy” which copies it to the clipboard and“paste” which inserts the clipboard contents into the current document in place of thecurrent selection.

Chapter 2 — Installation


Before you installThis chapter will walk you through a typical Axiom product installation. Theseinstructions apply to both MicroStation V7 and V8. V7 products are used in theexamples.

To install one or more Axiom products, you need:

• The latest Axiom product CD; and

• A license file on floppy disk for the product(s) you are about to install.

Please shut down all MicroStation sessions on your computer before continuing.

Typical installation from CD1. Insert the Axiom product CD into your CD drive.

2. The dialog box below should come up automatically. This may take a few momentsdepending on computer and CD drive speed.

CONDITIONAL: In some cases Windows® is set to suppress auto-running executables.If the installation process does not begin automatically when you insert the CD, you willneed to start the process manually. From the Windows Start Menu, choose “Run…” andtype in the following:D:\Setup.exe

where “D” is your CD drive letter.


3. Click the [OK] button and the first installation dialog box (below) will appear.

4. Select MicroStation V7 or MicroStation V8 and click [Next].

5. Choose which type of installation you want to perform. The “Typical” installation isbest for most situations and asks the user to make very few decisions.

6. These instructions will describe only the “Typical” installation path. Choose“Typical” and click [Next].


7. Choose the license file for this installation. Toggle on “I have a license filesomewhere else.” And press [Next].

8. Browse to the “axiom.lic” file on the CD and click [Open]. The licenses in thespecified license file will display in the next dialog box. Press [Next].

Although you have already selected the MicroStation family (V7 or V8) for whichyou want to install Axiom tools, it is common for one computer to have more thanone instance of MicroStation installed on it. For example, you might have twoversions of MicroStation/J installed (07.01.04.16 and 07.02.04.20). You must choosewhich of the two you want to associate your Axiom tools with.


9. Highlight the version of MicroStation you want to associate the Axiom tools with andclick [Next].

Since this is a “Typical” installation, all programs for which an Axiom license wasfound will already be “checked-on” to be installed. Other items that are alsoautomatically “checked-on” for installation are the product User’s Guides, individualproduct sample files and Axiom’s MicroStation pull-down menu.


10. To proceed with default selections click [Next].

You’ve now completed the Pre-Setup.

11. Click [Next] to proceed with the installation.


12. The [Next]button is grayed-out unless you accept the agreement.

If you accept the license and click [Next], the installation will begin. You can click[Cancel] at any time to abort the installation.


13. This is the final dialog box. It shows that the installation is complete. By default the“View Readme.pdf” option is toggled on and will display the Readme.pdf documentwhen you click [Finish].

CongratulationsThat’s it! You have successfully completed the installation of your Axiom tools.


Chapter 3 — Uninstalling

Uninstalling Axiom productsAxiom products can be uninstalled easily through the Windows® Start Menu.

1. Go to {Start}, Programs | Axiom.

2. Select “Uninstall V7 products” or “Uninstall V8 products” depending on the productsyou want to uninstall.

3. Choose “Select all.” or “Select components to uninstall.” If you choose “Selectcomponents to uninstall.” then each product in the list can be manually checked orunchecked. This allows for any combination of products to be uninstalled. Onlyinstalled products will be shown in the list.

Note: At the bottom of the list of products you also have the option to uninstall sampledesign files, user’s guides and even the Axiom pull-down menu.

4. Once you’ve made your selections, click the [Uninstall] button to complete theuninstall process.

Chapter 4 — Quick Start


Quick Start Objectives

Quick Start Objectives

The purpose of this Quick Start is to introduce you to the basic features of MicrosoftOffice Importer for V8 so that you can immediately use the program.

This Quick Start should take less than 30 minutes.

Prerequisites

MicroStation V8.5 (2004 Edition) or later.

Microsoft Office Importer for V8 must be installed on your computer. You can verify thisby selecting the “Axiom” menu from MicroStation’s main menu bar, then selectingMicrosoft Office Importer for V8. If Microsoft Office Importer for V8 does not load,follow the instructions in the Installation section of your Microsoft Office Importer for V8User’s Guide.

You will need the sample files that are delivered with Microsoft Office Importer for V8.The default installation will store these sample files in the following location:

c:\Program Files (x86)\Axiom\V8\Office\Sample\

Demonstration Version

The demonstration version of Microsoft Office Importer for V8 will work with designfiles up to 100 kilobytes in size and expires on a specific date.

The demonstration version also has an accumulated paste limit of 50 lines. To reset thelimit, unload Microsoft Office Importer for V8 with MicroStation’s Utilities | MDLApplications | {Unload} button and then restart Microsoft Office Importer from the


“Axiom” menu.

Tutorial #1 — Basics

Select Microsoft Office Importer for V8 from the “Axiom” menu. You will see theMicrosoft Office Importer for V8 toolbar.

Push the {Settings} button (the last button on the toolbar) to open the Microsoft OfficeImporter Settings box.

Just in case someone worked with Microsoft Office Importer for V8 before you beganthis Quick Start, let’s restore factory defaults. In the upper left hand corner of the settingsbox, you will see a “File” menu. Select the option, “Restore Factory Defaults….”

An “Alert” message box then displays, click the {Yes} button to accept changing thesettings back to their factory defaults.

If you have any questions about Microsoft Office Importer for V8’s features, the fullUser’s Guide is always available from the “Settings” box, using Help | Contents...:

In the next tutorials, we will look at pasting a spreadsheet with the default settings andthen changing settings and pasting again to see how the appearance of the paste can bealtered.

Tutorial #2 — Paste a spreadsheet using default options


To begin, start MicroStation and open a new design file or the sample test file that comeswith Microsoft Office Importer named office.dgn. It will be found in the “sample” folderwhere Microsoft Office Importer for V8 is installed. The default location for the“sample” folder is shown below:

c:\Program Files (x86)\Axiom\V8\Office\Sample\Concrete Summary.dgn

Select Microsoft Office Importer for V8 from the “Axiom” menu on the MicroStationMenu Bar. Or you can load Microsoft Office Importer for V8 by keying in an “mdl load”in the MicroStation key-in window (Utilities | Key-in). You need to add the full path andfile name for the Microsoft Office Importer for V8 application. For a default installationof Microsoft Office Importer for V8, you would use the following “mdl load” key-incommand:

mdl load "c:\Program Files (x86)\Axiom\V8\Office\Office.ma"

The Microsoft Office Importer for V8 toolbar will then display. From left to right, yousee the {Paste}, {Paste Excel Charts}, {Edit}, {Manage}, {List} and {Settings} buttons.We will start with a simple “Paste” using default settings.

Microsoft Office Importer for V8 toolbar

Load Microsoft Excel and open the sample file provided with Microsoft Office Importerfor V8 called Project.xls. By default, the Project.xls sample file will be found thefollowing location:

c:\Program Files (x86)\Axiom\V8\Office\Sample\Project.xls

Copy all or part of the spreadsheet to the clipboard by using highlight and Edit | Copy…or {Ctrl-C}.

Now go back to MicroStation and press Microsoft Office Importer for V8’s {Pasteclipboard data into MicroStation} button:


Move your mouse and notice that a box is hanging off of your cursor point. Move themouse pointer over to a blank place in the design file.

Click to “accept” the placement. Microsoft Office Importer for V8 will “drop” thecontents of the clipboard from the Excel file onto your MicroStation design file.

By default, your paste will contain a link to the Excel spreadsheet. You will see thefollowing information box, which you can close by clicking the {OK} button.

Use the “Window Area” tool to zoom in on that newly placed box to see the text. Theimage below shows part of what you should see on your screen:

The text, which is ten point Arial in the Excel table, is pasted with a text height of 10master units in the design file. This is the result of using the default settings.

Tip: Microsoft Office Importer for V8 automatically matches the font of the originaldocument. In MicroStation, the Arial font appears like this:


See Tutorial #4, “Selecting a different font” for instructions on how to change the font.

Tutorial #3 — Adding or eliminating border lines

The display of border lines are determined by the Format | Cells… options in MicrosoftExcel. In the previous tutorial, no borders were specified.

In this example, we will turn on all grid lines in the paste.

Select Category “Borders” from the Microsoft Office Importer for V8 Settings box.

From the “Borders:” pull down menu, select “Always”, then click the {OK} button.

Your text from the last tutorial should still be on the clipboard. If it is not, copy theselected spreadsheet information to the clipboard again.

In MicroStation, click Microsoft Office Importer for V8’s {Paste clipboard data intoMicroStation} button and place the new spreadsheet in a blank part of the design file byclicking your left-mouse button.

Part of your pasted data should look like the image below.


Tutorial #4 — Split paste into columns

It is often necessary to split a single paste into multiple pieces (“columns”) in order for itto fit in a sheet’s border at the necessary text size. In this tutorial, we will show you haveto have Microsoft Office Importer split a single paste into multiple pieces (“columns”) inorder to fit it inside your border.

This tutorial assumes your settings are as you left them in the previous tutorial.

Open the sample design file “Concrete Summary.dgn” in MicroStation.

Open the sample spreadsheet “Concrete Summary.xls” in Excel.

Select all cells in the spreadsheet with {Ctrl-A}.

Copy the selected cells to your clipboard with {Ctrl-C}.

Fit view so you can see the entire border.

In Microsoft Office Importer’s toolbar, press the {Paste clipboard contents} button. A tallrectangle will appear. Observe that it is too tall to fit inside the border.

In the “Paste Excel data into MicroStation” tool settings box

Turn on “Split paste into columns.” And

Turn on “Repeat XLS header of [n] rows in each column.” And

Set n to 5. This means Microsoft Office Importer will take five rows of header cells fromthe top of your copied data and repeat them at the top of each of the pieces (“columns”)of your paste it creates.


Place a data point near the top-left corner inside the border. This will be the top-left pointof your paste.

Move your mouse pointer to near the bottom of the border and about a third of the widthof the border to the right. Observe that your single paste rectangle has been replaced withmultiple rectangles. By moving your mouse pointer to the right, you control the distancebetween these pieces (“columns”) of your paste. As you move your mouse pointer up anddown (the Y axis), you control the maximum height of these pieces (“columns”) and thushow many pieces/columns your paste will be split into. Move your mouse pointer aroundfor a minute until you understand what’s going on. Once you get it, it’s actually verysimple.

When you’ve chosen your desired column offset and maximum column height by movingyour mouse pointer, place a data point to complete the paste. With these particular samplefiles, three columns are needed to fit all the data into the border at Microsoft OfficeImporter’s default text height and width settings.

Your sample Excel data has now been pasted into this DGN file in three pieces orcolumns. When your paste is updated by Microsoft Office Importer in the future, all threeof these columns will remain in the positions you chose, but their contents will beupdated to reflect the contents of the source spreadsheet at the time of the update. The“Split paste into columns.” setting also works with Microsoft Word pastes, not just Excelpastes. The “Repeat XLS header of [n] rows in each column.” setting only works withExcel pastes.

Tutorial #5 — Pasting Word documents

The “Paste Word data into MicroStation” box appears once Microsoft Office Importer forV8 has finished analyzing the clipboard contents. This tutorial shows how the options inthis box allow you to change the appearance of your pasted data.

The image below shows factory defaults.


When you paste Word documents using the factory default settings, you should get agood quality paste that is acceptable in most cases. There are a couple of conditions youmay have to care for to maximize the quality of your pastes and these are:

All text will paste with the factory default font, which is the same font as the sourcedocument. Words that are italicized or bolded within sentences will be italicized orbolded by default in the paste. If you want to modify the bold weight and italic slantapplied, you can modify these through Microsoft Office Importer for V8’s “Settings” box.Go to the “Text” category, click the “Formatting” tab then modify the “Use bold weight”and “Apply slant to italic text of n degrees.” in the “Attributes” section.

You can easily change your text height and with settinsg before making your paste. Seethe section in this tutorial entitled “Changing the width of the paste.”

See later sections in this guide for other options to change fonts, size, color of text andline height.

Selecting a different font

This version of Microsoft Office Importer for V8 offers users several ways to choose aparticular font. To change the font, go to the “Settings | Text” category. Open the “Font”tab “Set default font” will be active. Click on the pull-down menu to change this defaultto any font you have installed in your MicroStation font resource file.


A further explanation of each of the four options can be found in the “Help” file and PDFdocumentation for Microsoft Office Importer. The section of the User’s Guide that coversthis is titled “The Font tab”.

Changing the width of the paste

In Microsoft Word, copy the text of OfficeSample.doc to the clipboard with {Ctrl-C} orEdit | Copy.

In MicroStation, open Microsoft Office Importer for V8 if it is not already open.

Click the {Paste clipboard data into MicroStation} button. You will see the “Paste Worddata into MicroStation” box.

Select the option “Define Width while placing text.” from the “Page width:” drop downmenu as in the image below.


Now you are prompted to enter two points to define the width. Your result could looklike the image below.

Tutorial #6 — Importing with links

Importing with links to the original document enables you to update the paste from thesource document at a later time. Updates can be set up to occur automatically when thedesign file is opened or manually by clicking an update button. This tutorial demonstratesmanual update.

Microsoft Office Importer for V8 gives you an easy method to create links in your designfile. We will demonstrate how to paste a spreadsheet with a link and update that link.

Use Microsoft Excel to open the sample file provided with Microsoft Office Importer forV8 called Project.xls. It will be found in the installation directory (for example:“c:\Program Files\Axiom\V8\office\sample\Project.xls”).

Copy all or part of the spreadsheet to the clipboard by selecting cells and then using “Edit| Copy” or pressing {Ctrl-C}.


Open office.dgn in MicroStation if it is not already opened.

Click the {Paste clipboard data into MicroStation} button.

You will see the “Paste Excel data into MicroStation” box with default settings. The“Import with a link to the original document” and “Update automatically when designfile opens” options are on by default.

Use a data point to place your clipboard information into the design file.

Next, click the {Manage} button.

You will be prompted to “Identify element”. Put a data point somewhere on the pastedelements and accept. The “Manage” dialog box opens.


Click the {Edit Source} button and make some changes into the spreadsheet. Be sure tosave the changes in Excel because the update function only picks up saved changes.

Back in MicroStation, click the {Update} button. The pasted text will update with yoursaved changes.

Note: By default Microsoft Office Importer for V8, installs in the MS_DGNAPPSconfiguration variable. The result of this is that if you update the source document laterand then open the design file, Microsoft Office Importer for V8 triggers an automaticupdate of pasted text.

Tutorial #7 — Pasting Excel charts into MicroStation

To begin, open MicroStation and open a new design file or the sample file that comeswith Microsoft Office Importer for V8. It is called office.dgn and will be found in the“sample” folder where Microsoft Office Importer for V8 is installed. The default locationfor the “sample” folder is shown below:

c:\Program Files (x86)\Axiom\V8\Office\Sample\Office.dgn

Select Microsoft Office Importer for V8 from the “Axiom” menu on the MicroStationMenu Bar. Or you can load Microsoft Office Importer for V8 by keying in an “mdlload” in the MicroStation key-in window (“Utilities | Key-in”). You need to add the fullpath and file name for the Microsoft Office Importer for V8 application. For a defaultinstallation of Microsoft Office Importer for V8, you would use the following “mdl load”key-in command:

mdl load "c:\program files (x86)\axiom\v8\office\office.ma"


When Microsoft Office Importer loads, you will see the Microsoft Office Importertoolbar.

Open the sample spreadsheet the Microsoft Office Importer sample folder called“Project.xls.”

Select the chart “Microsoft Office Importer’s sample chart”

Right-click and select the “Copy” option from the right-click menu.

Now, inside MicroStation, click the {Paste Excel charts into MicroStation} button.

Accept the location of your paste by entering a data point inside the design file.

Congratulations!


You have completed the Microsoft Office Importer Quick Start.

Chapter 5 — Using Microsoft Office Importer

Chapter 5 — Using Microsoft OfficeImporter

Starting Microsoft Office ImporterYou can select Microsoft Office Importer from the “Axiom” menu in the MicroStationmenu bar. Or you can load Microsoft Office Importer by keying in an “mdl load”command on the MicroStation command line. You need to add the path to office.ma foryour installation. For example:

mdl load "c:\program files\axiom\v8\office\office.ma"

Microsoft Office Importer’s Toolbar

Microsoft Office Importer’s toolbar has six buttons:

1. Paste clipboard data into MicroStation

2. Paste Excel charts into MicroStation

3. Edit — Edit a linked source document

4. Manage — Manage an existing link

5. List — List all links in active model

6. Settings — Open the Settings box

The following six sections will describe each of these buttons.

Paste clipboard data into MicroStation When you press the {Paste clipboard data into MicroStation} button on the main tool bar,Microsoft Office Importer will open the “Paste Excel data into MicroStation” box andallow you to paste the contents of your computer’s clipboard into your design file.


Note: The title bar will indicate if you are pasting Excel data “Paste Excel data intoMicroStation” or Word data “Paste Word data into MicroStation” to clearly show whattype of data you are pasting.

When this box appears and there is Microsoft Word or Excel data on the clipboard, youcan paste with a single data point in the design file.

See the “Paste clipboard data into MicroStation” section of this guide for a detaileddescription of the options available in this box.

Paste Excel charts into MicroStation The {Paste Excel charts into MicroStation} button will allow you to paste Excel chartsinto your design file. These charts are linked to the source chart so that any modificationto the chart can be automatically updated inside the design file.

Edit a linked source document Use this to instantly edit the linked source file (Excel spreadsheet or Word document) inExcel or Word.

Editing linked source documents which reside in ProjectWiseIf the file resides in ProjectWise, Microsoft Office Importer will check it out for you soyou can edit it, provided that you were logged into ProjectWise when you created thatpaste and that you’re logged into ProjectWise when you push this button.

Manage an existing link When you press the {Manage} button on the main tool bar, Microsoft Office Importerwill ask you to “Identify element”. Click on an element in the pasted information youwant to work with. Then you will see the “Manage Import Link” box with options to edit


or update the linked document that you chose to manage. This box and its options aredescribed in detail later in this guide.

“Manage Import Link” box showing “Link” tab.

“Manage Import Link” box showing “Symbology” tab.


List all links in active model Introduced in Microsoft Office Importer 8.11a, the {List…} button displays a list of allthe documents, spreadsheets and charts pasted into your active model by Microsoft OfficeImporter.

Each entry in the list represents one linked paste created by Microsoft Office Importer.The “Details” column tells you exactly what in the source document each link points to.

You can select one or multiple links in this list and then push one of theavailable buttons to perform that action on them.

The buttons are:

• {Fit in View} — Fit the selected pastes in your active view.

• {Display Info Border} — Display Microsoft Office Importer’s temporary border andlink header information around the selected pastes. This border and header info willdisappear when you close the list of links box or change which links are selected.

• {Manage} — Disabled if more than one link selected. Open the selected link in theMicrosoft Office Importer Manage tool.


• {Update} — Update the pasted data in the DGN from the source document if thesource document has been modified since the last time the data in the DGN wasupdated by Microsoft Office Importer.

{Ctrl-Update} Tip: Just like in the Manage box, holding the {Ctrl} key on yourkeyboard while pushing the {Update} button will cause the paste to be updated even ifthe paste is already up to date.

• {Delete Paste} — Delete this paste, including its link to the source document, fromthe DGN file.

• {Close} — Close the box.

Tip: When more than one link is selected and user pushes {Update}, messages will besent to the MicroStation message center instead of displaying in message boxes. This waythe user will not be inundated with multiple messages. For example, the message sayingthat a given paste is already up to date could otherwise come up more than once.

Microsoft Office Importer Settings The {Settings} button will bring up the Microsoft Office Importer Settings box, which isdescribed in a later section of this guide. Microsoft Office Importer has many options thatallow you to place documents with the settings and symbology that you want.


Chapter 6 — Pas ting clipboard data andExcel charts into MicroStation

The {Paste clipboard data into MicroStation} toolBefore pasting, copy your selected Microsoft Word, Excel or Access content to theclipboard.

When you click the Microsoft Office Importer {Paste clipboard contents intoMicroStation} button,, you are ready to import the contents of the clipboard into yourdesign file. You can then place the clipboard contents on your design file with a datapoint.

The Microsoft Office Importer default settings have been designed to give great results inmost cases. However, you may need to modify some settings to achieve the best resultswith your data.

The “Paste Excel data into MicroStation” boxThe “Paste Excel data into MicroStation” box appears after you click the {Paste clipboardcontents into MicroStation} button and becomes active after Microsoft Office Importeranalyzes the contents of the clipboard. It allows you to make some last minute choicesbefore placing the text.

Chapter 6 — Pasting clipboard data and Excel charts into MicroStation

Page width:The “Page width:” drop down menu gives you two options for pasting Excel data intoMicroStation. For pasting Word data into MicroStation, you have three “Page width:”options. Each option produces very different results and are described in the followingsections.

Excel “Page width:” options

Word “Page width:” options

Width defined by text size on clipboard (Excel and Word)This option is available for pasting Excel and Word data into MicroStation.

“Width defined by text size on clipboard” is the default option. When you use this option,the width of the line will be taken from the clipboard. You will see an outline showingthe width. You can paste it with a single data point on the design file.

Note: Using the “Paste clipboard contents.” option from the Axiom pull-down menu willpaste Excel or Word data using this method also.

Define width while placing text (Word only)This option is available only for pasting Word data into MicroStation.

When you select “Define width while placing text”, you place the clipboard contents witha single data point that defines the top left corner of the text and move your cursor to theright. An outline will follow the cursor. Click the mouse when you have reached thedesired width.

Note: Using the “Paste – User defined width (Word only)” option from the Axiom pull-down menu will paste Word data using this method also.

Note: This option, “Define width while placing text” does not function when importingtables in Word documents. In these cases when “Define width while placing text” is usedthe import width will be the same as if the “Define width from clipboard text size” optionwas used. This is because the “Scale proportional to Word data” (or “Excel” data) optionshould be used to maintain the same cell width to height ratio as in the spreadsheet whenimporting. Another option is to use MicroStation’s “Graphic Group lock” and the “ScaleElement” tool after the import to resize the imported area as needed.


Scale proportional to Excel (or Word) dataThis option is available for pasting Excel and Word data into MicroStation.

When you use “Scale proportional to Excel data”, you can define the width of the pastewith two data points as in the previous option. The difference is that the size of text, boththe text height and width, will be increased or decreased proportionally to fit the definedwidth.

If you select the same data point when specifying the width you will get this message inthe message area “The user defined page width is too small.” You must specify adifferent data point than the first data point when using the “Scale proportional to Exceldata” width option.

Note: Using the “Paste – User defined size” option from the Axiom pull-down menu willpaste Word data using this method also.

Split paste into columns.Microsoft Office Importer 8.12a adds a major improvement that allows users to split apaste into columns. This feature is also known as “column flow.”

Column Flow

Microsoft Office Importer’s tool settings box

The following tool setting checkboxes control Microsoft Office Importer’s column flowbehaviour:

Split paste into columns.

Repeat XLS header of [2] rows in each column. (Excel pastes only)

How Column Flow WorksRows (Excel and Word tables) and paragraphs (Word) will be moved to the next columnif they would go below the user-defined bottom of one column. Paragraphs are not split


between columns. If two rows have a merged cell between them, they are treated as onerow and thus pasted into the same column.

Column OffsetWhen “Split paste into columns” is ON, an additional datapoint is necessary whenpasting to specify the maximum height of your column and the offset to use betweencolumns (see image below).

The “ Repeat XLS header…” checkbox is only enabled when user pastes from Excel.Header rows cannot be merged with a subsequent row. For example, when user specifiesto repeate 3 header rows and there are cells merged between row 3 and 4, MicrosoftOffice Importer will display a helpful alert message telling them that this is not possibleand giving them suggestions about how to handle it.

Column Origin (Technical Notes)Microsoft Office Importer creates special cells named “OFCOL” in the upper-left cornerof all additional columns in a paste (not the first column in a paste.) When you update apaste, this cell is used as the column origin. This allows you to manually move columns ifnecessary (for example, you can select all column elements and move them to a newposition using MicroStation’s Move command).

Automatically Added Columns (Technical Notes)It is possible that you will need new columns in your DGN file as the linked-to sourcedata grows in Excel or Word. Microsoft Office Importer handles this automatically andquite nicely. When the number of columns needs to be increased during an update, a newcolumn is created in the DGN file. Its default location is to the “right” of the last column.Its default top-left corner is the same distance to the right of the last column as thecolumn spacing the user specified interactively when he first made this paste. The newcolumn’s maximum height is the same as that of the first column.


Text height and width

Using the default settings as in the image above, 10-point text will paste with a height of10 master units and a width of 8 master units.

Text height:The “Text Height” field displays the text height scale of master units to points that iscurrently active and gives you a chance to change it if you want.

Text width:The “Text Width:” field allows you to make a last minute change to the width of astandard character.

Import with a link to the original document.One of the benefits of Microsoft Office Importer is its ability to keep importedinformation in MicroStation linked to its source document (Word doc or Excelspreadsheet). Unless you have a good reason not to want any kind of link, we recommendyou leave this setting turned on.

Important Note: After pasting with Microsoft Office Importer, the source documentmust be saved in order to establish a valid link.

Tip: Even if you do not select the “Import with link…” the link information is saved withthe paste. This allows you to establish the link to the source document later. See the{Update} function in “The Manage Import Link box” section below.

Update automatically when design file opens.When you select “Import with link…”, you also have an option to select automaticupdating for the imported document. With automatic updating, the pasted text will updatefrom the source document automatically when you open the design file. However, thiscan happen only when Microsoft Office Importer is loaded and running.

To set up for automatic updating, see the section called “Installation for automaticupdate” in the installation section of this guide.

Tip: If you want to turn “Automatic update” on or off for a selection that has alreadybeen imported, you can do so in the “Manage Import Link” box, accessed via the{Manage...} button on the Microsoft Office Importer toolbar.


The {Paste Excel charts into MicroStation} tool

The {Paste Excel charts into MicroStation} will allow you to paste Excel charts into yourdesign file. These charts are linked to the source chart for future automatic update byMicrosoft Office Importer.

The “Paste Excel charts into MicroStation” box appears after you have copied an Excelchart to your clipboard and clicked the {Paste Excel charts into MicroStation} button.

The “Paste Excel charts into MicroStation” box

The “Paste Excel charts into MicroStation” tool settings box allows you control manyaspects of how your chart is pasted into your design file.

Settings already documentedThis tool’s settings are already documented earlier in this guide under the “{Pasteclipboard data into MicroStation}” tool.


Chapter 7 — Managing Existing Links

The {Manage} button The {Manage} button on Microsoft Office Importer’s toolbar allows you to changecertain aspects of the linked information, including changing the stored path to the linkedsource document, updating the information in the DGN file from the source documentand quickly editing the source document.

How to use the Manage toolClick the {Manage} button. If you have more than one Microsoft Office Importer link inyour active model, you will be prompted:

“Manage Import Link > Identify element”

If prompted, click on some part of the linked data that you want to manage and then datapoint to accept your choice.

The “Manage Import Link” box will open.

Note: The Manage function can also be accessed from the Axiom pull-down menu usingthe “Manage an existing Microsoft Office Importer link.” option. This is the same aspressing the {Manage} button.

The “Manage Microsoft Office Importer Link” box

The “Manage Microsoft Office Importer Link” box for a linked Excelspreadsheet stored locally


The “Manage Microsoft Office Importer Link” box for a linked Excelspreadsheet located inside ProjectWise

{Apply}The {Apply} button will only be enabled if change has been made in the Manage ImportLink box. Click the {Apply} button to save your changes to the link data stored in yourdesign file. {Apply} will also update the source document, as though you’d also pressed{Update}. Unlike, the {Update} button, however, {Apply} updates the linkedinformation regardless of whether the modification date of the source document indicatesit has been changed.

{Edit…}Click the {Edit…} button to open the source document for editing. Be sure to save yourmodified source document.

{Update}Click the {Update} button to update the linked information from the source document.The update will only occur if the source document has changed since its last update,based on its file modification date.

The {Update} function works only with saved files and it is always necessary to save thechanged source file before the update in order for the update to be successful.

Tip: Use the key-in command “OFFICE UPDATEALL” to update all of the MicrosoftOffice Importer links in your active model.


{Ctrl-Update}Holding the {Ctrl} key on your keyboard while pushing the {Update} button will causethe paste to be updated even if the paste is already up to date.

{Cancel}Click {Cancel} to close the “Manage Import Link” box. This will discard any changesmade since the last time you pressed {Apply}.

The “Link” tab

“Manage Import Link” box showing “Link” tab.

Three Ways to Locate Linked DocumentsMicrosoft Office Importer can link to source documents three ways:

• Use file path to find source document

• Use ProjectWise URL to find source document

• Use Internet URL to find source document

You won’t see the second or third choices selected in your pastes unless you paste datafrom Excel and Word documents stored in ProjectWise or opened via a web browser(such as for users of Microsoft SharePoint).

The “Use ProjectWise URL to find source document” choice is only visible when yourMicroStation workspace is connected to ProjectWise.


Source:When you move or rename a source file that is linked to a design file, the link isgenerally broken. Use the {Select…} button to locate the source document in its newlocation and Microsoft Office Importer will repair the link. After locating the new sourcedocument, click the {Apply} button to save the full file specification as the new“Source:” field value.

Tip: When you float your mouse over this field, Microsoft Office Importer will display aballoon help message telling you when this Excel or Word data was last updated in thisDGN file from the linked source document.

Update automatically when design file opens.You can change the link type of the paste from Automatic to Manual or from Manual toAutomatic with this toggle. After changing this toggle, click {Update} to save thechange.

Lock pasted elements.See “Lock pasted elements.” section of this guide.

Group pasted elements into cells.See “Group pasted elements into cells.” section of this guide.

Excel AttributesThis section of the Manage box gives you options for adjusting the cell range and theExcel sheet name the information was pasted from.

Top-left Cell/Bottom-right CellEdit the range of your linked Excel information. If a column or row is added modify therange in the “Top Left/Bottom Right” fields so that Microsoft Office Importer knows theexact area of your spreadsheet you wish to link into MicroStation. Click the {Apply}button to apply your cell range changes.

Sheet NameEdit the name of the Excel sheet tab from which your spreadsheet was pasted. If the nameof the Excel sheet was changed, click the {Apply} button to apply the name change.


The “Symbology” tab

“Manage Microsoft Office Importer Link” box showing “Symbology” tab.

TextThese are options for setting the symbology for all of the text in an existing MicrosoftOffice Importer paste.

Color:“Color” overrides the present text color within your imported text, check this option anduse the color picker to select any color for your pasted text.

Weight:“Weight” overrides the present text weight within your imported text, check this optionand use the weight picker to select any weight for your pasted text.

Style:“Style” overrides the present text style of your imported text, check this option and usethe style picker to select any style for your pasted text.

Level:“Level” overrides the present text level of your imported text, check this option and usethe level picker to select any level for your pasted text.


When you do not select color, weight or level…

Options for handling unselected settings.

Take unselected settings from source documentWhen you do not select exact color, weight, or level in the options above, choose thisoption to always take these settings from your source document.

Take unselected settings from active symbologyWhen you do not select exact color, weight or level in the options above, choose thisoption to always take these settings from MicroStation active symbology.

Borders

The “Borders” category allows a user to modify color, weight, style and level attributesfor any previously pasted spreadsheet or word document. “Take unselected settings…”options are also available for “Borders” as well. Remember, changes here will be appliedto all of the border lines.


Additional information on working with linked dataWhen you paste text or spreadsheets with Microsoft Office Importer, the program createsa small point cell containing a zero length line that is a construction element. This pointcell contains the link information. You can see this cell just above the left side of thepaste if you set view attributes to view constructions.

The point cells, containing link information, together with the other elements of the paste,form a Graphic Group.

Rotating or moving linked dataTo successfully rotate or move linked information, you should have Graphic Group lock“On” (checked). Then you will be able to update from the source while maintaining therotation angle and new location. If you rotate or move linked data without graphic grouplock turned on, your link may be un-rotated and un-moved when you update it.

Chapter 8 — Microsoft Office Importer Settings

Chapter 8 — Microsoft Office ImporterSettings

The {Settings} button The {Settings} button opens Microsoft Office Importer’s “Settings” box. Here you cantailor the appearance of your future pastes.

Note: you can also access Microsoft Office Importer’s Settings box from the Axiompull-down menu by selecting the “Change Microsoft Office Importer settings.” option.

Microsoft Office Importer Settings boxYou can find descriptions of the options in the “Text”, “Borders”, “Pasting”, “ImportLink”, “List of Links” and “ProjectWise” sections of this guide.


File menuThe “File” menu on the top bar of the “Settings” box allows you to save several sets ofoptions and recall options that were previously saved.

Options are saved in initialization files also known as “.ini” files. The “.ini” files can beedited with a text editor.

When you first install and run Microsoft Office Importer, it creates an office.ini filein the same directory with office.ma. This file contains the factory default settingsand loads by default when Microsoft Office Importer starts up.

The default settings file office.ini will initially contain the factory default settingsvalues but you can change these settings and save your preferences to any location.

Saving your own settingsYou can tailor your settings and save them in different locations and with differentnames.

You can use a configuration variable, OFFICE_INI, to point to your saved settings.OFFICE_INI can contain simply a directory path pointing to a directory containingoffice.ini or it can contain the full file spec of your settings file.

Examples:c:\myOfficeSettings\

c:\settings\office\project123.ini

Tip: Users running office.ma from a server may find it useful to set up OFFICE_INI, tosave personal settings on a local drive.

If you do not define the OFFICE_INI configuration variable, Microsoft Office Importerwill look for the last settings file that was used and load it if it can find it. When it findsno settings file, it loads the factory default settings.


Load Settings...When Microsoft Office Importer is started up, it searches for a valid settings file andloads the first one it finds. It looks in the following places:

1. The “.ini” file defined in the $(OFFICE_INI) MicroStation configuration variable.

2. The office.ini file in the directory defined by the $(OFFICE_INI) MicroStationconfiguration variable.

3. The previous settings file used if it exists.

4. The office.ini file in the directory that office.ma was executed from.

5. The office.ini file in the …axiom directory.

6. If Microsoft Office Importer does not find office.ini in any of these directories,it will use its factory default settings.

Save SettingsUse “Save Settings” to save all currently selected options into the active settings file.

If you have not loaded a different “.ini” file, the settings will be saved to the default “.ini”file, which is OFFICE.INI.

Save Settings As...Use “Save Settings As…” to save your current settings with a filename of your choice.

Save Settings on ExitUse this checkbox (off by default) to save your modified settings without being promptedwhen you exit Microsoft Office Importer.

Restore Factory Defaults…This clears all settings to their factory default state.


Help menu

The “Help” menu gives you options to open the Microsoft Office Importer “Help” fileand to open an HTML file with version and licensing information, as well as Axiomcontact information and e-mail addresses.

Help | ContentsUse this to open this guide in Windows Help (CHM) format.

Help | AboutUse this to get program version and license information. The “Help | About” HTML filealso gives you links to obtain support.


CategoryIn the settings box you will see several categories on the left. When you highlight one ofthese categories, the options associated with that category appear on the right.


Currently active settings file nameYou will see the name of the currently active settings file in the title bar of the settingsbox.

{Match}Use this button to change the current settings to match those settings stored in an existinglink. Click the {Match} button, select the Microsoft office Importer paste in your activemodel that you want to match the settings from, then data point to accept.

Information fieldAt the bottom of the settings box is an information field. The information displayed inthis field relates to the last area where you clicked your mouse.

This information field contains only a general description. If you need more information,you can use the “Help | Contents...” menu to bring up the full User’s Guide.

{OK}Click {OK} to accept the current settings and close the Settings box.

{Cancel}Click {Cancel} to close the Settings box without saving any changes you made.


Chapter 9 — Tex t Settings Category

Text settingsThe “Text” settings category contains three tabs:

1. “Font” tab, which gives you settings to control the fonts used in your pastes.

2. “Formatting” tab, which gives you settings for controlling how the text isformatted in your pastes.

Chapter 9 — Text Settings Category

3. “Size” tab, which gives you settings for controlling the scale at which your text ispasted and sizing the non-text areas.


The Font tabThe four options in this tab allow the user to define exactly what fonts to be used whenimporting Microsoft Word or Excel documents.

Use same fonts as source document.Enable this option to use exactly the same fonts that are contained within a sourcedocument when pasting it into MicroStation.

Set default fontThe font chosen here will be used for all pastes into MicroStation. The fonts displayed inthis pulldown menu are determined by MicroStation’s font.rsc file. Instructions on how toinstall new fonts are located at the end of this section.

Use active fontMicroStation’s active font will determine the font that is used when pasting.


Advanced font mappingThe “Advanced font mapping” is used so that Microsoft Office Importer can use the fontfamily that matches the font used in the source document. For example, if the font in theMicrosoft Word file is Arial, it will paste with the fonts selected for the Arial family.

If the font in the source does not belong to any of the Microsoft font families, then thedefault font is used.

Microsoft Word provides “TrueType” fonts for creating "portable" documents, that is,documents that always keep their original appearance no matter which computer orprinter you use to view or print them.

The TrueType fonts and the PostScript fonts have a font family. These are “Roman”(Times), “Swiss” (Arial, Helvetica), “Modern” (Courier), “Script” (Script) and someothers. You can use the full family when pasting Microsoft Word documents.

Using font families allows you to achieve the best output with the least amount of work.

{Set All to Normal}Use {Set All to Normal} to set the bold, italic and bold-italic fonts to the same numberfont as the normal font for that font family. Text that is on the clipboard as bold or italictext will then paste using the normal font.

{Set All to Default}Use the {Set All to Default} button to set all fonts to the default font that is on theprevious tab. This erases all special settings.


The “Formatting” tab

Use the “Formatting” tab to set options for importing paragraphs as text nodes, importingstacked fractions, setting the symbology and other options.

Note: Characters in a True Type font that was imported from MicroStation V7 toMicroStation V8 will not be exactly the same size as characters in the MicroStation V8font with the same name. In most cases the MicroStation V8 characters will be slightlylarger. So if you convert a MicroStation V7 design file containing text with a font thatoriginated as a TrueType font and then enter text with the MicroStation V8 native font ofthe same name you might notice a slight difference in character size between the two setsof text. This is usually evident in text elements containing several words of text.


Import with V7 text nodes.When you select this, each paragraph pastes as a single text node. This setting is “Off”(unchecked) by default.

If your standards require consistency of text appearance, you can use this option to forceall italics, bold and underlined text to the style of the first character of the paste. Anotheradvantage of this option is that the pasted text will be easier to edit using MicroStationtools. However, all text in a paragraph will paste with the symbology of the firstcharacter. Embedded bold, italic underlined text may paste as normal text. Specialformatting, tabs and numbered lists will look less like the original.

Note: If it is desirable to edit pasted text and to maintain perfect formatting, considerlinking the pasted text to the source document and making changes in the sourcedocument. The “Manage” function of Microsoft Office Importer facilitates this method.

Examples:

For example, consider a paragraph containing one underlined word like the following.Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid ofthe party.

When this option is “On” (checked), this text pastes as a single text node all words havethe same formatting. The underline is lost.

When this option is “Off” (unchecked), V8 text nodes preserve the full formatting of theoriginal Word document.

Import stacked fractions from Excel.When the “Import stacked fractions from Excel” option is turned on, fractions withinyour Excel spreadsheets will be converted into stacked fractions in MicroStation.

In order to convert fractions from Excel into stacked fractions in MicroStation, thefollowing conditions must be met:

1. The Excel cell’s Number format (“Format | Cells | Number” tab) must be set to“Fraction”.

2. The cell must have a fraction somewhere in it (such as “1/2”.)

3. Microsoft Office Importer’s “Import stacked fractions from Excel.” checkboxmust be turned on.

4. The MicroStation font must include a symbol for that stacked fraction.

5. MicroStation’s “Element | Text Styles | Fractions” checkbox must be turned on.

Spaces between tab stops:When a tab character is encountered on the clipboard, Microsoft Office Importer insertsspaces in the line. For each tab character imported, a set of “n” spaces is placed in linewhere n is equal to the number of characters in this Microsoft Office Importer setting.


Tabs are only processed when importing from Word documents and then only if the“Import with V7 text nodes” is checked on.

Note: If you insert tabs in a Word document that has the left indent set, pressing the{Tab} key results in moving the left indent to the next tab stop. That is, additional tabcharacters will not be inserted to the left of the line.

Height of a single line will be nnn% of text height.The height of a line of text should be greater than the text height in order to increasereadability. If line height is the same as the text height, one line is pressed up against thenext. The default for this field is 150%, which usually gives a very readable result. ForExcel imports, this setting applies only to cells with text that wrap in the cell.

Symbology

Color:To select a color that is different from the source document color and the MicroStationactive color, check this option and use the color picker to select any color for your pastedtext.

Weight:To select a weight that is different from the source document weight and theMicroStation active weight, check this option and use the weight picker to select theweight for your pasted text.

Style:To specify a line style attribute for your text, check this option and use the style picker toselect the line style for your pasted text.

Level:The “Level” field contains the level for text placement. To change it, just type in anothervalid level number.

Handling unselected “Symbology” settingsYou have two options for handling unselected “Symbology” settings. The screen shotbelow and the following sections explain how to use these options.


Take unselected settings from source documentWhen you do not select exact color or weight in the options above, choose this option toalways take these settings from your source document.

Take unselected settings from active symbologyWhen you do not select exact color or weight in the options above, choose this option toalways take these settings from MicroStation active symbology.

AttributesModify these attributes to change bold weight the angle of italicized text.

Bold WeightModifying this value specifies Microsoft Office Importer to use this setting for importedtext with a bold style.

Italic slantModifying this value causes Microsoft Office Importer to add a “slant” attribute toimported text.


The Size tab

Use the “Size” tab to set the text scale factor for data pasted intoMicroStation.

NameThe “Name” field gives you the opportunity to create named pairs of text height and textwidth values. These values are available to you when pasting documents intoMicroStation through the “Paste Excel data into MicroStation” dialog box.

Note: The “Named text size:” option on the “Paste...” dialog box will display and makenamed text sizes are defined in the current Microsoft Office Importer settings.


Height:The “Height” field gives you the translation factor from text point size in MicrosoftOffice to text character height in MicroStation master units.

The default scale of “1.00000” gives a one point to one master unit ratio.

Examples:

With scale 1.00000:

8-point text pastes at 8 master units.

10-point text pastes as 10 master units.

With a scale of 0.60000:

8-point text pastes as 4.8 master units. (8 x 0.6)

10-point text pastes as 6 master units. (10 x 0.6)




Width:The “Width” field gives you the translation factor from text point size in Microsoft Officeto text character width in MicroStation master units.

The default scale of “0.80000” gives a one point to 0.8 master unit ratio.

Examples:

With scale 0.80000:

8-point text pastes at 6.4 master units.

10-point text pastes as 8 master units.








Text ratio lockThe text ratio lock maintains a saved ratio between text height and width.

When using the ratio lock, if either height or width changes, the other number changes tomaintain the same ratio.

To set or change the ratio, unlock the text ratio lock icon by clicking on it. Change widthand height so as to obtain the desired ratio. Then click {Update} to apply the changes.

After you set the ratio, you can now close the lock icon, change the width or height andexpect the ratio to be maintained.

{Calculate...}Click {Calculate...} to open up a box which can help you calculate your Office-to-MicroStation text size ratios.

{Add}{Add} button allows you add a name to the list of height/width pairs.


{Remove}{Remove} button will delete a named pair from the list of height/width pairs.

{Update}{Update} button will update height and width values that have been modified for thehighlighted pair.

{Move Up} and {Move Down}The {Move Up} and {Move Down} buttons allow you to change the order in which thenamed pairs are displayed within the list.

Non-text area height: and Non-text area width:“Non-text area height” times “Text height” and “Non-text area width” times “Textheight” determine the relationship between text and non-text factors like line spacing,spreadsheet cell size and page margins.

We include these scales because there is not a precise tile size relationship to a font inMicroStation and a Windows font even when the font you import is apparently the same.This setting allows you to compensate for that difference while maintaining preciseMicroStation text heights during the paste.

These Non-text Area factors do NOT influence the size of text in MicroStation butdetermine the scale of related non-text features such as line spacing and page margins.

The default values of 1.3 give the best results in most cases when using fonts of the samename in both the Microsoft application and MicroStation. When mapping a TrueTypefont like “Arial” to a MicroStation fixed width font like “Working”, higher values willusually give better results due to the inherent differences between these two fonts. A fewquick trial pastes will determine the best value to use.

Word wrapIf text is too long for the cell width, the following rules apply:

1. If the cell formatting option in Excel includes "Word wrap", then text in the cell isalways wrapped.

2. If word wrap is not selected and the adjacent cell is empty, then text overflows intothe next cell.

3. If the adjacent cell is not empty, then text is truncated.


How to compute cell height when pasting from ExcelCell height in the MicroStation design file depends on several factors.

Note: In all cases, if the computed height for different cells of the same table row isdifferent, the maximum value for all cells of the row is used.

A precise row height is defined in the Excel spreadsheet.

The formula for cell height in the design file is as follows:

CellHeightMS = RowHeight * TextScale * NonTextHeight

where

CellHeightMS - the height of the cell in MicroStation in master units

RowHeight - precise row height define d in the source application

TextScale - text height scale setting value, mu/pt (default 1.000)

NonTextHeight - non-text area height (default 1.300)

When using settings as in the images above, the formula becomes:

12.75 * 1.00000 * 1.30000 = 16.575 master units cell height in design file.

How to compute cell height when pasting Microsoft Word tablesTwo factors in Microsoft Word documents can affect the outcome, “cell height” and“allowable minimum height”.


The default caseIn most Microsoft Word files, cell height and “allowable minimum height” are notdefined in the source application. This is the default case for Microsoft Word. In this case

CellHeightMS = TextHeight * TextScale * HeightOfSingleLineFactor

where


TextHeight - height of the text in the source document in points

TextScale - text height scale setting value, mu/pt (“mu” is short for “master units”,“pt” is short for points).

HeightOfSingleLineFactor - value of “Height of a single line setting” in the“Formatting” tab (see image below. default is 150%)

Example:

If you paste a table from Microsoft Word with 10-point text using MicrosoftOffice Importer default settings, the cell height will be 15 master units.

10 pt * 1 mu/pt * 150% = 15 master units cell height in the design file.

With 12-point text, again using the default settings, the cell height will be 18 masterunits.

12 pt * 1 mu/pt * 150% = 18 master units cell height in the design file


When cell height is defined exactly in the source documentSometimes a cell height is defined exactly in the Word document. To check this,highlight one or more cells in the table and select “Table | Cell Height and Width...” inthe Microsoft Word main menu.

In that case, the formula becomes the same as the formula for Excel spreadsheets when aprecise row height is defined.

CellHeightMS = CellHeight * TextScale * NonTextHeight

where


CellHeight - precise cell height defined in source application

TextScale - text height scale setting value, mu/pt

NonTextHeight - non-text height setting value


When a “minimum height” is defined in the source documentWhen a minimum height is defined in the Word document, Microsoft Office Importeruses the larger of the “At least” height or the computed height as described in the defaultcase above.

Chapter 10 — Borders Settings Category


Borders Settings CategoryThe Borders settings box contains some additional options that apply to pastingspreadsheet information. “Table Lines” refer to the spreadsheet cell border lines.


Border lines:Use the “Border lines:” option to control the handling of cell borders and grid lines.

Note: Excel does not place borders on cells by default. Cell borders can be appliedthrough Excel’s “Format | Cells… | Borders” box. Borders are user-definable.

As in sourceWhen you select “As in source”, you will get borders displaying as they are displayed inthe source document. The cell grid lines will not be imported.

AlwaysWhen you select “Always”, every cell will be outlined by grid lines or border lines in thedesign file. The user-defined borders override any grid lines in the source document.

NeverSelect “Never”, to turn off all cell outlines—neither borders nor grid lines will beimported.

Import diagonal border lines defined in source.If your source Excel spreadsheet has diagonal border lines defined in it, checking thisoption on will ensure those diagonal border lines are imported into MicroStation.

Technical Note: Expect your imports to slow down if you turn this option on as thediagonal border line information isn’t on the clipboard — it has to be requested fromExcel directly, which can be slow.


Shift Text in cells by “nn%” of the current line height

With this option you can control the vertical placement of text inside the cell. Thepercentage is based on current line height. Shift will be up or down depending onalignment. Text aligned on the bottom will be shifted up, while text aligned on the topwill shift down.

Import filled cells from ExcelEnabling this option, Microsoft Office Importer will import all filled cells from an Excelspreadsheet.

SymbologyUse the options in this area to set the “Symbology” attributes for your border lines whenyou paste data into your active design file.

Color:To select a color that is different from the source document color and the MicroStationactive color, check this option and use the color picker to select any color for importedborders and grid lines.

WeightTo select a weight that is different from the source document weight and theMicroStation active weight, check this option and use the weight picker to select theweight for imported borders and grid lines.

StyleTo select a line style that is different from the source document line style and theMicroStation active style, check this option and use the style picker to select the line stylefor imported borders and grid lines.

LevelThe “Level” field contains the level for imported borders and grid lines placement. Tochange it, just type in another valid level number.


When you do not select color, weight or line style

Options for handling unselected settings

Take un-selected settings from source document.When you do not select exact color, weight or line style in the options above, choose thisoption to always take these settings from your source document. This is the default.

Take un-selected settings from active symbologyWhen you do not select exact color, weight or line style in the options above, choose thisoption to always take these settings from MicroStation active symbology.


Chapter 11 — Pas ting Settings Category

Pasting Settings CategoryThe “Pasting” settings box contains settings which allow you to control how things arepasted and how the paste is ultimately laid out (in multiple columns or one.)

Chapter 11 — Pasting Settings Category


Split paste into columns.This lets you automatically create multiple columns in your DGN for a single paste.

Repeat XLS header of [n] rows in each column.This tells Microsoft Office Importer to duplicate a certain number of XLS header rows atthe top of each of its automatically created columns, so the user doesn’t have to bringthese column headers in manually with additional pastes.

Show contents while pasting.Show the contents of the paste (text and border lines) while doing the paste. This is usefulfor pasting data into multiple columns in the DGN file using the “Split paste intocolumns.” feature as it allows users to see exactly what text their columns will end at,without requiring trial and error. Off by default.

Display Mode:The two choices are

• Always display text.

• Display rectangles in place of text. (Faster)

Lock pasted elements.This will prohibit users from editing pasted text or moving columns, by locking thepasted elements. This does not disable Microsoft Office Importer updates. Off by default.

Group pasted elements into cells.Put each paste into one or more cells automatically. This feature has two intendedbenefits:

• To make it easier to reposition your entire paste, compared to a paste full of loosetext and line elements.

• To encourage users to not edit their Microsoft Office Importer pastes inMicroStation, as those changes will be overwritten if the DGN is later updatedfrom the source document.

Chapter 11 — Pasting Settings Category

Off by default.

Technical Details: With this option enabled, one-piece pastes will be placed in a cellnamed OFIMP. If you use “Split paste into columns” to split a paste into multiplecolumns in the DGN (a multi-part paste), each such column will be placed in its own cell.The cell for the first piece will be named “OFIMP”. Subsequent columns in each pastewill be placed in a cell named “OFCOL”.


Chapter 12 — Link ing Settings Category

Linking Settings CategoryHere you can control various aspects of the link that will be created to your sourcedocuments when you paste information into MicroStation with Microsoft OfficeImporter.

Chapter 12 — Linking Settings Category


Note: Microsoft Word and Excel information can be linked. Access databaseinformation can be pasted but not linked.

Create a link to the original document.Select “Create a link to the original document.” to create a live link between the pasteddata and the source document. When you select this option and save your settings, itbecomes the default.

Whatever you select for this option will display in the “Paste Excel data intoMicroStation” box and can be changed for that single paste at the time of the paste.

Selections that you make in the “Paste Excel data into MicroStation” box apply only tothe current paste and will not change your default settings.

Important note: After pasting from a Microsoft Word document, the source documentmust be saved in order to establish a valid link. This is because the action of pastingcreates a bookmark in the Word document, which will be lost if the Word document isnot saved after the paste is performed.

Update automatically when design file opensSelect “Update automatically when design file opens.” (the default) to paste yourinformation with an update status of “Automatic”. This will cause Microsoft OfficeImporter to update your linked file automatically when the design file is opened inMicroStation. Only linked data with an update status of “Automatic” will be processedthis way.

Un-select “Update automatically when design file opens.” to paste with an update statusof “Manual”. With “Manual” update status, the pasted data can be updated via the{Update} button in the “Manage Import Link” box. It will not update automatically whenthe design file opens.

At the time of any individual paste, the “Automatic” update status for that paste can beset on or off in any of the “Paste...” boxes. After placement, you can also change the linkstatus from “Automatic” to “Manual” or vice versa via the “Manage Import Link” box,accessed via the “Manage” button on the Microsoft Office Import toolbar.

In order to use “Automatic Update”, Microsoft Office Importer must be running in thebackground when the design file is opened. This is set up for you automatically when youload Microsoft Office Importer.

The next section shows how to set this up if it has been removed. It is very simple.


Set up for automatic updatingIf you want Microsoft Office Importer to update your pasted text from the sourcedocument automatically when you open the design file, your axiom.cfg file shouldcontain a line for loading office.ma. If it does not, you can modify your axiomconfiguration file. The following steps show how to do this.

1. Close MicroStation.

2. Locate your axiom.cfg file in your MicroStation “…\config\appl\” directory andopen it in a text editor such as Notepad.

3. At the bottom of your axiom.cfg file, type in or paste the following line:

MS_DGNAPPS > $(AXI)office/office.ma

4. Save the axiom.cfg file and close it.

Save source document paths as:

The choices are

• Absolute Path — This stores an absolute (not relative) path to the source documentin the DGN file when you make a paste. For local documents, a drive-letter-style pathwill be stored in the link. For network documents, the next setting (below) determineswhether a UNC or drive-letter-style path will be stored in the link. Prior to MicrosoftOffice Importer 8.11a, this was the only way link paths were stored.


• Relative Path (the default, as of version 8.14c) — This stores a path to the sourcedocument relative to the location of the DGN file being pasted into. For example, ifthe source document “file.xls” is located one folder above the folder your DGN file isin, Microsoft Office Importer will save a relative path of “..\file.xls” in the linkcreated when you make your paste. The “..” means “go up one folder.”

Technical Note: If you use “Relative Path” and the document you paste is in the samefolder as the DGN file you are pasting it into, only the file name (no path) is stored in thelink. These are indistinguishable from pastes made using “No Path”.

• No Path — This stores no path information in the link. This option is onlyrecommended if you use the OFFICE_DIRS MicroStation configuration variable tolocate your linked source documents.

The OFFICE_DIRS configuration variableOFFICE_DIRS is a Microsoft Office Importer MicroStation configuration variable thatcan contain a semi-colon-separated list of folders (directories) for Microsoft OfficeImporter to search for source documents in. It gets used when updating the linked data inthe DGN file and when the user asks to edit the source document. It is only checked whenthere is no path stored in the DGN file link to the source document, which can occur intwo cases:

• When you set Microsoft Office Importer to “Settings | Import Linking | Save sourcedocument paths as: {Filename only}” before you made the paste; or

• When you set Microsoft Office Importer to “Settings | Import Linking | Save sourcedocument paths as: {Relative Path}” before you made the paste and the sourcedocument was located in the same folder as the DGN it was being pasted into. This isbecause a relative path of “same folder as master file” actually contains no pathinformation when stored by Microsoft Office Importer.

Trivia: OFFICE_DIRS is loosely modeled after MicroStation’s configuration variablefor locating reference files, MS_RFDIR.

OFFICE_DIRS is not defined by default. To find out how to edit a MicroStationconfiguration variable, please consult your CAD manager.

Tip: If you want Microsoft Office Importer to search for its linked source documents inthe same folders that MicroStation itself searches for reference files, defineOFFICE_DIRS with a value of “$(MS_RFDIR)” (without the quotes) and set “Savesource document paths as:” to save “Filename only” before you perform your pastes.

When source document is on a network drive:

This is only applicable when the option above it, “Save source document paths as:”, is setto “Full Path”. Otherwise, this is disabled.


The choices are:

• Save UNC (\\server\folder\document.xls) (the default) — This gets a UNC from theclipboard. That stored UNC-style path will be used to locate the source document forediting it or updating the DGN in the future.

• Save mapped drive letter (N:\document.xls) — This will ask Windows to convert theUNC from the clipboard into a drive letter. If there are multiple drive lettersassociated with the UNC used, the drive letter which is earlier in the alphabet will beused. If no matching drive letter is found, the UNC path from the clipboard will beused and the user will receive a message notifying him of this.


Chapter 13 — Updating Settings Category

Updating Settings CategoryHere you can control various aspects of how Microsoft Office Importer automaticallyupdates linked pastes when opening a DGN file or changing to another model in youractive DGN file.

Chapter 13 — Updating Settings Category


When user opens new design file or model:The three options are

• Update all modified automatic pastes without asking. (Default)

• Ask before updating any automatic pastes.

• Don’t update any automatic pastes.

When user closes toolbar:The two options are

• Unload Microsoft Office Importer. Stops automatic updating.

• Hide Microsoft Office Importer. Allows updates to occur.

Chapter 14 — List of Links Settings Category

Chapter 14 — List of Links SettingsCategory

List of Links Settings CategoryMicrosoft Office Importer pastes Excel and Word data into MicroStation DGN files witha “link” back to the source document so that the data in the DGN file can be updatedfrom that source document if it changes in the future.

Microsoft Office Importer’s toolbar has a button named {List — List all links in activemodel}. That button opens the “Microsoft Office Importer Links” box, which displays allthose Microsoft Office Importer links in your active model. This Settings category letsyou control some aspects of how that box behaves.


These particular settings are believed to be self-explanatory so they will not be expandedupon herein.

Chapter 14 — List of Links Settings Category


Highlight color:, Highlight line weight:, Highlight line style:Select the highlight color, weight and line style that will be used when a user clicks{Display Info Border} in the List of Links box to temporarily display the type of link(automatic or manual), the path to the source document and a dotted line border aroundthe pasted elements.

Chapter 15 — ProjectWise Settings Category

Chapter 15 — Pro jectWise SettingsCategory

ProjectWise Settings CategoryLinked Excel spreadsheets and Word documents may reside on a local or network harddrive or they may reside in ProjectWise.

The option button seen in the picture above has two choices:

• Use ProjectWise URL to find source document

• Use file path to find source document

The default value is “Use ProjectWise URL to find source document” and most users willnever need to change that. However, if you’re ever pasting data from Excel spreadsheetsor Word documents located in a ProjectWise working directory but do not wantMicrosoft Office Importer to create links to the source documents inside ProjectWise, setthis to “Use file path to find source document.”

Technical Note: At paste time, Microsoft Office Importer automatically checks thelocation of the Excel or Word file and only prompts you to log into ProjectWise if the filebeing pasted from is located in a ProjectWise working directory. Therefore, there shouldbe little need for most users to change the state of this “When pasting a new link:” settingas Microsoft Office Importer handles things automatically.


How ProjectWise Support WorksWhen pasting an Excel spreadsheet or Word document which was checked out fromProjectWise and iDesktop integration between MicroStation and ProjectWise is active,Microsoft Office Importer stores the URL to that ProjectWise document rather thanstoring the path to the checked out file on disk in its “...\dms_nnnnn\” folder.

Subsequently, when Microsoft Office Importer needs that Excel spreadsheet or Worddocument in the future, it can check it out or copy it out of ProjectWise itself withoutbothering the user because it knows where it is stored in ProjectWise.


Chapter 16 — Troubleshooting


How to calculate text sizeMicrosoft Office Importer comes with a handy Excel spreadsheet to help you calculatethe text size values to use in Settings | Text | Size. It is …\Axiom\V8\Office\Text SizeSettings Calculator.xls”.

Pasting from documents opened via a URL (includingdocuments in Microsoft SharePoint)

Microsoft Office Importer 8.11a will recognize when an XLS or DOC file was opened viaURL (such as files opened via Microsoft SharePoint) and it will save that URL in its link(instead of a local path, which wouldn’t be as useful). When you need to update the DGNfile from that source document in the future, Microsoft Office Importer can get it for youin the background using that saved URL when you push {Update} or when an automaticupdate is performed upon opening the DGN file.

For this to work, Microsoft Office Importer requires that the initial paste be done with adocument opened with Internet Explorer, not an alternative web browser. If you pasted anXLS or DOC file which was opened via URL and cannot get it to update, it is possibleyou did not open it with Internet Explorer when you originally did your paste. If this isthe case, you’ll need to open it with Internet Explorer and perform your paste again.

Formatting OptionsMicrosoft Office applications have many powerful formatting options that can be used tocontrol the appearance of text in your Office documents. It is not possible for MicrosoftOffice Importer to duplicate all of these formatting options. In fact, some of theformatting information for these options is not placed in the Windows clipboard whenyou copy your text to the clipboard. Because of this, Microsoft Office Importer cannotalways format your imports exactly as they are in the Office document. This sectiondescribes specific conditions that can be caused by this lack of formatting information.Please review this section when your import is substantially different from what youexpected.


Tables

In Microsoft Excel, text overlaps cell borderText has an inherent problem that the fonts available in MicroStation may not matchthose used in Windows. Even when using fonts of the same size, MicroStation can use adifferent size for the space character. This makes it difficult to correctly gauge cell width.

If you do not specify a font in the Font settings tab, the default font will be used. Thismay produce unexpected results.

For the best results use the “Advanced font mapping” option in the “Fonts” tab of yourtext settings. Find the source font in the list of font families displayed on the left of theimage below.

See the font settings section in this guide for a description of how to select a differentfont and how to import a Windows font into MicroStation.

You can also enlarge the cells by increasing the “Non-text Area Height” and Non-textArea Width” settings.

In Microsoft Excel, cell contents print on top of each otherWhen pasting from a spreadsheet, do cell contents print on top of each other? If you openthe “Page Setup” dialog for that file in Microsoft Excel, you may see that the scaling isadjusted to something other than 100% of normal size. This causes all the sizes in theclipboard to be changed except for font size. If you turn on the borders in your cells, youcan see that the pasted cells overlap because they are too small.

Just change the scaling in the source file to 100% and everything should be pastedcorrectly.

Microsoft Excel produces other anomaliesAccording to Microsoft Engineers, Excel is subject to inconspicuous file corruptions thatresult in incorrectly pasted data in Microsoft Office Importer (i.e. mismatched lines,overlapping, wrong sized text). Microsoft recommends copying the cells in question into


a new workbook using only “Edit | Paste Special | Values” and reapplying the formattingto the new workbook, or selecting “Edit | Paste Special | All” to preserve the formatting.This will correct the problem in the majority of situations.

Grid lines or borders do not displayNo grid lines or borders will be imported into MicroStation unless:

A. Borders are selected in the source file and the “Table | Import lines:” option is setto “As in source”; or

B. “Table | Import lines:” is set to “Always”.

Height of grid lines or text is not exactThe exact formula for computing cell height can be found in the “General Settings”section of this document.

If after following the formula, the cell height is still off by a small amount, this may bedue to the unit settings of the specific file. For example, a design has the followingsettings:

12 IN per FT and 254 Positional Units per IN.

The resolution of this design is 12*254=3048.

In this file, we cannot create an element with an exact height of .12 master units. Given avalue 0.12 for cell height will produce a result of 3048*0.12=365.76 – This is not aninteger value, so a value of 365 or 366 will be used by MicroStation, which gives a value365/3048 = 0.11975 or 366/3048 = 0.12008.

Microsoft Word documentsThe following section covers troubleshooting data for doing pastes from Worddocuments.

My fonts look different after converting design files to V8 format.Importing fonts into V8 is important if you have been using Microsoft Office Importer toimport text into MicroStation V7 design files with fonts imported from Windows. It isimportant because when you open these V7 design files in MicroStation V8 or convertthem to V8 format, the fonts, which were originally Windows fonts, will not exist inMicroStation V8. In this case font 0 will be used for the text.


Pasting of highly formatted document or document containingnumbered lists is not perfect.To get the best results, turn off the “Import paragraphs as text nodes” setting beforepasting. You will see this option in the “Paste clipboard contents” box that appears afteryou click the “Paste...” button.

Additionally, problems can occur when pasting a highly formatted document created withWord XP from Word 2000 or Word 97. Open the document in Word XP and paste fromthere.

Numbered lists have no space after the numbers.Example:

1. This is the first line and it is short.

2. This is line number 2 and it is also short.

3. This is the third line.

Does your sample paste look like the image below?

The usual cause is that the text indenting space in the Word file is relatively small and thefont in MicroStation is wider than the one in Word. You can handle this by increasing thetext indent in the Numbered list properties of the Word document and you will see thespace emerging.

Here is how to handle this:

1. Highlight some of the numbered text in the source document and right click with themouse.

2. Select “Bullets and Numbering” from the pull down menu.


3. In the box that appears, you will have several formatting selections under the“Numbered” tab. Select one that gives a larger indentation as in the image below.Then click {OK}.

4. Before you paste, be sure you turn off the toggle for “Import paragraphs as textnodes.” in Microsoft Office Importer’s “Paste clipboard contents” box.

Your next paste should look more like this:

Bullets are imported as fractionsFrequently a symbol font is used for bullets in Word documents. This is even though thelines containing the bullets are formatted with a commonly used font like Times Romanor Arial. When you import the bullet list and you do not have a symbol font available inMicroStation, font 0 will be used for the bullet. Font 0 contains many characters that arestacked fractions and this is most likely what you will get rather than the bullet symbol.Or you might get another character other than a fraction. You can correct this in one oftwo ways.

You can use the MicroStation “Change Text Attributes” tool to change the font on thestacked fraction character after the import is completed. Just change the font to Times


Roman for example and the bullet will be displayed. This will work in some casesbecause the numeric code for a bullet in many fonts is the same numeric code in theSymbol font.

The other option is to have Microsoft Office Importer convert the font for the bulletcharacter from Symbol to Times Roman when you import the text. You do this byselecting the Microsoft Office Importer tool “Settings | Text” and the “Font ” tab, thenchange the “Normal:” and “Bold:” fields to point to the Times Roman font. Your settingsshould look like this.

Bullets or list numbers lostSometimes when you import and later update a list of bullet or numbered items the lastbullet or number is lost. This is due to an issue with the Windows Object Linking andEmbedding (OLE) protocol. You can prevent this with the following procedure.

When highlighting and copying Word text ending with a bullet or number list you musthave a second paragraph mark “¶” after the last list item. But you only need to highlightthrough the paragraph mark at the end of the last list item. This is illustrated in thefollowing image.

When you do this, subsequent edits and updates of the imported text will result in the lastitem keeping its bullet or number.

Tip: You can view the paragraph marks in a Word document as in the image above byselecting the menu items “Tools | Options… | View” and select the “All” checkbox under“Nonprinting characters”.


Ultra-wide text in DGN file (Character Spacing)If text from your Word document comes in to MicroStation ultra wide, that text probablyhas its “Character Spacing” property in Word set to something other than “Normal”. Thepossible values are Normal, Expanded and Condensed. Versions of Microsoft OfficeImporter prior to 8.11a require this to be set to “Normal”.

Microsoft Office Importer 8.11a can handle any of the three values. Normal andExpanded work as expected and Condensed text is treated the same as if it were set toNormal.

To handle this ultra-wide text problem, either upgrade to Microsoft Office Importer 8.11aor change the text’s character spacing in Word to “Normal”. In Word 97, go to “Format |Font”, select the “Character Spacing” tab and click on the “Spacing:” option. (This maybe located in different places in different versions of Word.)

Hanging indents overlap.To handle problems with overlap in hanging indents, open the document in Word and putyour cursor in the section of text with a hanging indent. Then go to “Format |Paragraph… | Indents and Spacing”. Increase the value in the “Indentation By:” field asneeded.


Text size is inconsistent with original document.When a document is overcrowded with styles and these styles are stronglyinterconnected, the internal Microsoft Word conversion to RTF format can contain errorsin the font size used. Try copying the text to a new blank Microsoft Word document andeliminate some styles before attempting to paste into MicroStation again.

Tables in Word documents import with cell height too cramped.Cell height squashed down to the size of the text is usually the result of a specificcorruption in the Word document that can be easily tested for and fixed.

Highlight a row in the table. Then select “Table | Cell Height and Width…” from theMicrosoft Word menu. The dialog that opens may look like the image below. The rowheight “At least” has been set to 7.2pt although the text size is 10pt. This is the field thatMicroStation uses to determine cell height. Increase the “At:” size to handle the problem.

Paragraph IndentingAt times it appears as if Microsoft Office Importer is not processing tab characters thatyou inserted into your Word document. There are two possible reasons for this.

One way the tabs will be ignored is when pasting with the “Import paragraphs as textnodes” paste option checked. To handle this, ensure the “Import with V7 text nodes”option is Off in the “Paste Clipboard Contents” options.


Another reason relates to an option in Microsoft Word that sets the left indent with thetab key. If this option is checked, pressing the tab key with the insertion point at the leftside of a line will move the indent point to the next tab stop. In this case, a tab characteris not placed in the line. To turn off this Word option, go to the Word menu “Tools |Options” and select the “Edit” tab. Uncheck the option “Tabs and backspaces set leftindent”.

With this Word option checked, the Microsoft Office Importer “Settings | Text |Formatting [tab] | Spaces between tab stops” option has no effect on the import becausethere are no tab characters in the imported text.

Tabs in Word documents not lining upUsing tabs for formatting in Microsoft Word is unreliable. Changing the value of tab sizein Word as well as changing font properties will break formatting in a documentformatted via tabs. For this reason, we recommend you use tables without borders insteadof tabs in Word.

Pasted text is one column of characters.This can occurs when using the “User Defined” width paste option. If the width specifiedis less than the width of one character the paste width will default to the width of onecharacter. The paste will result in one long column of characters.

Deleted text keeps re-appearing.When you paste text that is linked to a source document, a small point cell containing aconstruction element (a zero length line) at the beginning of the pasted data contains thelink information. This element is invisible unless you have “Constructions” selected inMicroStation’s View Attributes dialog as in the image below:

To permanently delete linked text and tables, turn “Graphic Group” lock on beforedeleting. This will pick up the construction element and the paste will be permanentlydeleted.



Moved text keeps reverting to previous location.When you paste text that is linked to a source document, a small point cell containing aconstruction element (a zero length line) at the top left of the pasted data contains the linkinformation. This element is invisible unless you have “Constructions” selected inMicroStation’s View Attributes dialog as in the image below.

To move or rotate linked text and tables you must include the construction element in themove. To do this, turn “Graphic Group” lock on before moving or rotating.

The paste does not update after editing the source.If the paste does not update after editing the source it may be because you failed to savethe source file after updating it. Save the source file and try the update again.

Linked data contains a visible element at the startThis element, a point cell containing a zero length line holds information about the paste.The zero length line is a construction element and can be made invisible by un-selectingthe MicroStation “View Attributes | Construction” option.

Italic slant is set to 0 degrees in Microsoft Office Importer’ssettings but italicized text comes in slanted anywayThere is a MicroStation idiosyncrasy whereby if you leave Microsoft Office Importer’scheckbox to add a slant value to italicized text turned on but enter a value of 0 degrees(the default is 15 degrees), italicized text gets imported with a slant of approximately 5degrees, not 0 degrees.

This is actually the way MicroStation behaves internally. But it is easy to handle: Justturn the checkbox off instead of setting the number of degrees to 0. Then MicroStation —and thus Microsoft Office Importer — will behave perfectly.


Field CodesThere are many field codes that can be inserted into Word documents and the list of fieldcodes differs with different versions of Word. Microsoft Office Importer must performspecial processing for each field code imported. Microsoft Office Importer cannot processall field codes available in Word documents. Processing for the most frequently usedfield codes has been implemented in Microsoft Office Importer. However, if a field codeis imported that is not recognized by Microsoft Office Importer, then that code will not beincluded in the paste. You will have to interactively edit the text in MicroStation to insertthe missing text that resulted from the field code in the Word document.

Special characters print incorrectlyWhen you use an incorrect font, some characters may be substituted with unexpectedresults. It is known that at least “{”, “>”, “~” and “” are not available in several standardMicroStation fonts (you can’t even type them in Place Text).

To import text without losing punctuation, set your word processor from “smart quotes”(these are the quote marks just used) to "straight quotes". Then when you bring your textin with Microsoft Office Importer it will retain the basic punctuation you had in the wordprocessor such as “” (double quotes) and ! (exclamation point), etc. The only exception isif you are using a symbol font in MicroStation.

Clipboard is tied upOnce you have clicked the paste tool with valid data on the clipboard, it will be tied up byMicrosoft Office Importer.

The clipboard will be released as soon as its Microsoft Office Importer’s paste into yourdesign file is complete.

Formatting trouble upgrading very old (c. 2005) pastes created byMicrosoft Office Importer 3.6b/8.3b

Pastes created by a V7/V8 pair of very old versions of Microsoft Office Importer(3.6b for V7, released 31 December 2004 and 8.3b for V8, released 7 January 2005)will encounter formatting problems if upgraded with Microsoft Office Importer 8.10aand future versions.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to automatically differentiate a 3.6b/8.3b paste frompastes made by the immediately preceding and immediately succeeding versions ofMicrosoft Office Importer. The only way to diagnose this problem is by observing thesymptom: Formatting irregularities on update.

If you encounter formatting problems updating old pastes, we recommend you installan older version of Microsoft Office Importer (specifically, 8.9a) and update thoseold pastes with that version (8.9a). After updating 3.6b/8.3b pastes with 8.9a, thelinks can thereafter be updated by future versions of Microsoft Office Importerwithout encountering formatting trouble. If you have links that have already been


updated and manifest formatting problems, you can either re-paste them or changetheir settings via Microsoft Office Importer’s Manage tool.

Making this change in Microsoft Office Importer 8.10a actually increases itscompatibility with pastes from old versions at the cost of harming pastes created withone specific version pair, 3.6b/8.3b. We believe this tradeoff will be more help thanhindrance.

If you need to contact Axiom for assistance, please refer them to Axiom internalcases 3012 and 8833.

Other errors/problems not covered hereIf you encounter errors not covered in this manual, send a detailed email [email protected]. Please include as much information about your operatingsystem, the problem that you are experiencing and exactly what you did when thisproblem occurred. Also make sure to include the version number of MicroStation andMicrosoft Office Importer that you are running.

Chapter 17 — We’ll Make (Almost) Any Enhancements You Want

Chapter 17 — We’ ll Make (Almost) AnyEnhancements You Want

We welcome your suggestionsMicrosoft Office Importer is a powerful program. Nonetheless, we realize that you, askilled and creative MicroStation user, will think of ways in which it can be improved.We invite you to tell us your ideas.

For over twenty years we’ve listened to you, the skilled MicroStation professional, andhave implemented the features you’ve requested. Every widely acclaimed product we’veever developed, including FileFixer, evolved in this manner.

We’d like to make Microsoft Office Importer perform every function you could everimagine such a product being able to do. We intend to make you such a satisfiedMicrosoft Office Importer customer that you can’t wait for the next user group meeting soyou can tell your friends and associates how much you like Microsoft Office Importer andhow strongly you recommend it.

Your suggestions on how to improve Microsoft Office Importer are most welcome.


Chapter 18 — New Features and Fixes

Version 8.16e — 27 September 2013Fixed: Fixed a rare issue where very specific Excel cell ranges would display incorrectlyin the Manage box and would occasionally result in the paste’s range changing on update.

Version 8.16d — 9 August 2013Fixed: Fixed a problem where non-displayed border lines would be shown in the headerrows of data pasted from Excel into MicroStation. For this error to occur, MicrosoftOffice Importer’s settings had to be set to override border line style and “Import filledcells” had to be enabled.

Version 8.16c — 26 July 2013Fixed: Fixed a problem where the Excel.exe process would sometimes stay running,prohibiting users from opening the last-updated linked spreadsheet.

Version 8.16b — 5 July 2013Fixed: Microsoft Office Importer did not differentiate between medium and thick borderlines when importing from Excel 2010, bringing them both in as weight 1.

Version 8.16a — 11 January 2013New: Added support for Office 2007 and 2010 2D charts. Some or all 3D charts includeraster information and so are not presently supported.

New: PowerDraft! Microsoft Office Importer for PowerDraft V8i is now available. It ispossible that all PowerDraft V8 versions will work well, but they are not certified.Previously, there was no Microsoft Office Importer for PowerDraft.

New: Updated Axiom licensing system.

Changed: When active drawing file in MicroStation is a DWG, Microsoft OfficeImporter will not put pasted elements into text nodes. This is internal case 11653.

Changed: Default text width (Settings | Change Settings... | Text | Size | Text Width:) isnow 1.0 instead of 0.8.


Various user interface improvements and bug fixes.

Version 8.15c — 8 June 2012Fixed: Improved handling of tables in Word documents.

Important Note: These improvements only apply to newly created Word doc pastes asapplying the new Word doc table formatting algorithm retroactively (to existing pastes)would impact the size of those pastes. Existing (pre-8.15c) Word pastes will still beupdated when the source document has changed, but the formatting method used duringthose updates will continue to be the pre-8.15c style for those pastes.

Version 8.15b — 3 February 2012Fixed: Changing symbology settings in the “Manage Microsoft Office Importer Link”box had no effect on the pasted elements.

Version 8.15a — 20 January 2012New: Previously, when a user closed Microsoft Office Importer’s toolbar, it wouldunload completely. But that left Microsoft Office Importer unable to update pastes whenopening subsequent DGN files because it was no longer running. To prevent this,Microsoft Office Importer will now hide (rather than unload) when the user closes itstoolbar. You can unhide Microsoft Office Importer by choosing Axiom | Microsoft OfficeImporter or by keying in “mdl load office”.

Important notice for anyone upgrading: The new default is to hide (not unload)Microsoft Office Importer when its toolbar is closed. This will impact all users — newinstallations and upgrade installations. Users who prefer it the old way (unload whenclosing the toolbar) can change it in Microsoft Office Importer’s new “Updating” settingscategory. The option is “When user closes toolbar:”.

New: Automatic updating now works when opening another model in the active DGN.Previously, automatic updating only worked when opening a different DGN file, notwhen changing to another model.

New: Added the ability to lock all the elements in a given paste. Off by default.

New: Added the ability to place pasted elements into cells. Off by default.

New: Added a text size calculator to help users quickly and easily control the size of theirimported text. To use it, push the {Settings...} button on Microsoft Office Importer’stoolbar, then choose Text | Size | {Calculate...}

New: Added an option to prompt users before automatically updating pastes whenopening a DGN or making a different model active. Off by default.


New: Added an option to disable the automatic updating of all pastes when opening aDGN or making a different model active. This option doesn’t depend on the “Updateautomatically when design file opens” setting stored in each individual paste. Off bydefault.

Fixed: Fixed an Excel 2010-only case where double-line borders were not coming inwhen the “Scale proportional to Excel data” option was used during the paste.

Fixed: Offset between double-line border lines was not scaled when "Scaleproportional..." paste method was used.

Changed: If Microsoft Office Importer is unable to find the linked document whenperforming an automatic update, it now writes a message to MicroStation’s MessageCenter about it. Previously, there was no message shown in Message Center in this case.

Version 8.14c — 4 November 2011Important notice for anyone upgrading: We changed an important default settingrelated to the link to the imported source document. In previous versions, MicrosoftOffice Importer would save the link to the source document using an absolute path bydefault. The new default is to save the link using a relative path.

This will impact new Microsoft Office Importer installations. It will also impact existinginstallations after a user chooses Settings | Restore Factory Defaults.

This will not change how paths are stored in existing Microsoft Office Importer links.

Changed: Changed the new default setting for Import Linking | Save source documentpaths as: from “Absolute Path” to “Relative Path”. The purpose of this change is to makeMicrosoft Office Importer links survive scenarios such as the renaming of projectdirectories, remapping server drive letters and other such changes that would cause linksusing absolute paths to become broken.

Fixed: Added a new configuration variable named“OFFICE_DISABLE_JUSTIFICATION” to work around a case reported by onecustomer where a stacked fraction would, due to a MicroStation bug, lack a spacecharacter in front of it. This made that stacked fraction abut the text preceding it. Givethat configuration variable a value of “1” without the quotes to activate it.

Fixed: Using the {Delete Paste} button in the list of links box to delete a pasted Excelchart would leave a border shape in the design file.

Version 8.14b — 5 August 2011Fixed: Changing text height or width settings during a paste would result in no text (onlyborder lines) being pasted.


Version 8.14a — 17 June 2011New: Added the “Show contents while pasting.” option. Now Microsoft Office Importerusers can see the text and lines that they are pasting before their paste is complete, whichcan help them choose the ideal “Split paste into columns” column height on the first try.

Important Note: This new feature is disabled by default as it can run slow on oldercomputers or with very large pastes. If it runs fast enough for you (with your pastes onyour computer), feel free to turn it on using {Settings...} | Pasting | Show contents whilepasting.

Changed: Renamed the “Columns” settings category to “Pasting”.

Changed: Removed an unnecessary warning message when user has Settings | ChangeSettings… | Columns | Paste XLS header of n rows in each column. turned on but ispasting data from a Word document. That setting doesn’t apply to Word documentpastes, so the warning is unnecessary.

Version 8.13b — 10 June 2011Fixed: Updating a paste created using “Scale proportional to Excel data” couldsometimes be misformatted.

Fixed: Fixed a case where “Non-text area” settings would not get saved.

Version 8.13a — 13 May 2011New: Added support for pasting Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet tables and Word 2010documents. This does not include support for pasting Excel 2010 charts.

New: We now store the “created by” and “last updated by” Microsoft Office Importerversion numbers in our pastes and INI files.

Fixed: Improved handling of Word doc tab indentation and made various other subtleformatting improvements.

Fixed: The “Use active font” setting was not working correctly.

Version 8.12e — 29 March 2011Fixed: Fixed a case where fractions in Excel would come into the DGN file as asterisksor with incorrect values.

Fixed: When pasting from Excel into a V7 DGN, some text nodes would appear tocollapse into simple text elements the next time the V7 DGN file was opened after thatpaste was made. When saving the V7 DGN, MicroStation was quietly dropping some textnodes which contained formatting unsupported in V7 DGN files. To prevent this,Microsoft Office Importer no longer creates text nodes during a paste or update of a pasteif the active file is a V7 DGN.


Fixed: Modifying link settings in the “Manage Microsoft Office Importer Link” box in aGerman version of Excel 2003 (and possibly other versions of German Excel) would fail.

Version 8.12d — 25 February 2011Fixed: Fixed a case where some grid lines were omitted from tables in pasted Worddocuments.

Version 8.12c — 11 February 2011New: When using “Repeat XLS header of [n] rows in each column.”, Microsoft OfficeImporter would warn you if your chosen row included cells merged with rows below it,but you were on your own to figure out how many rows below that were merged so youcould enter the right row number. Microsoft Office Importer will still warn you, but nowit will also do all the merged cell calculations for you and automatically enter the rightrow number for that paste.

Fixed: Fixed a bug in calculating which header rows are merged.

Fixed: Fixed an Excel cell border text overlap problem. This was introduced by a fixmade in Microsoft Office Importer 8.11b.

Version 8.12b — 21 January 2011Fixed: When no .INI file exists, Microsoft Office Importer will now use the Default levelfor pasted text and border lines by default. Previously, it tried to create a new level withno name.

Fixed: Fixed a problem where unicode text containing degree symbols would sometimesbe imported as the wrong characters.

This update is recommended for all Microsoft Office Importer users.

Version 8.12a — 22 October 2010New: Added ability to have pasted Excel and Word data flow into multiple columns inthe DGN file automatically!

Changed: When pasting a range of cells that contains empty cells, the dashed linerectangle showing you the extents of the paste are now limited to the populated cells, soyou can better estimate what will actually be visible in your DGN after your paste.

Fixed: Fixed a case where some pasted characters would be squished together in theDGN file.


Version 8.11e — 8 October 2010New: Added basic support for right-indented text in Excel spreadsheets.

Fixed: An unexpected dot would appear next to the number in numbered lists pastedfrom Word documents. This had to do with how MicroStation displays empty Unicodetext strings.

Fixed: Fixed an abort discovered in-house that could occur pressing {Apply} in the“Manage…” box when working with a paste from an Excel 2007 spreadsheet.

Changed: Settings | Borders | Import filled cells from Excel. will now be turned off bydefault.

Version 8.11d — 18 June 2010Fixed: Fixed a problem updating pastes created from spreadsheets stored in ProjectWiseV8i SELECTseries 1. Anyone running ProjectWise Server V8i SELECTseries 1 shouldupgrade to this Microsoft Office Importer version.

Version 8.11c — 7 May 2010Fixed: Fixed a bug that made it impossible to define a weight other than 0 for non-boldtext and define another weight for bold text at the same time.

New: Added new option to let user control whether we apply the "Bold" property to boldtext when importing it with a TrueType font. Previously this was always on, not optional.

Fixed: Fixed a problem where sometimes Word doc updates would look different whenthey were updated than when they were originally pasted.

Technical Description: This problem was due to an inconsistency in the data in theWindows clipboard when pasting compared with the data provided by Microsoft Wordduring updates. So now we bypass the Windows clipboard when getting the data to bepasted and get the paste data we need directly from Word. This way it is exactly the samedata as we get during updates. Made the same fix for Excel pastes, even though wehaven't encountered this problem with Excel yet.

Changed: Microsoft Office Importer is now delivered with a .CHM file instead of a .HLPfile.

Version 8.11b — 5 March 2010Fixed: Fixed a case where an absolute path would be stored in the Microsoft OfficeImporter link when a relative path should have been stored.

Fixed: Fixed a case where some Unicode characters were not imported correctly.


Fixed: Fixed a case where some text would be split into multiple elements in a text nodeinstead of just being one text element.

Fixed: Fixed a problem where a paste created from SharePoint didn’t update when userpressed {Update}.

Version 8.11a — 22 January 2010New: Added an {Edit} button to the Microsoft Office Importer toolbar. Previously, usershad to go into the Manage box and push the {Edit} button there.

New: Added a totally new feature: {List all links in active model}. It has its own toolbarbutton. This opens a box listing all the Microsoft Office Importer links/pastes in youractive model and lets you do things like fit view on one or more of them, edit a sourcedocument, open the Manage box or even delete pastes from the DGN file.

New: Added a setting that lets users choose whether to save link paths as UNC or driveletter-style paths when they are pasted. Previously, Microsoft Office Importer would usedrive letter-style paths when pasting from local documents and always use UNCs whenpasting from documents on network drives.

New: Added ability to store relative paths when creating new pastes. Previously, only fullpaths were supported. Saving links with no path information is another new option.

New: Added ability to search for source documents using a configuration variable,OFFICE_DIRS. OFFICE_DIRS is similar to MicroStation’s MS_RFDIR configurationvariable but for Microsoft Office Importer links instead of reference files. This requiresthe use of another new feature, the ability to save no path in the links (just filenames).

New: Added experimental support for linking to pastes made from Microsoft SharePoint.Such documents must be opened from SharePoint via Internet Explorer (not anotherbrowser).

New: Added “last updated” time stamp to info border header so it will be displayed whenusers push {Display Info Header}. Also added this as a balloon help message in the“Source:” field of the Manage box.

New: Added “Save Settings on Exit” choice to the “File” menu in the Settings box. Offby default.

Changed: Improved Microsoft Office Importer sample file “Advanced FormattingSample.xls” to represent more of Microsoft Office Importer’s features.

Changed: Holding {Ctrl} while pushing the {Edit Source} button in the Manage box(and in the new “list of links” box) will update pastes even if they are already up to date.Previously, it was not possible to update such pastes without saving the source documentagain to change its “last modified” date.

Changed: Improved Microsoft Office Importer’s toolbar icons.

Changed: Manage button no longer asks user to choose a paste if the active modelcontains only one Microsoft Office Importer paste.

Changed: Various user interface improvements throughout Microsoft Office Importer.


Changed: Various formatting improvements for Excel spreadsheet and Word doc pastes.

Changed: Retired the {Unlink} button, located in the Manage box. If you need thisrestored, please email [email protected].

Changed: Retired the {Info} button. It no longer appears on the toolbar. You can stillkey-in “office info” to get the same result.

Fixed: “Import stacked fractions” wasn’t working on Excel 2007 spreadsheets.

Version 8.10a — 30 October 2009New: This version of Microsoft Office Importer is now certified for use with Excel 2007spreadsheet data (not charts) and Word 2007 documents. A future release will add chartsupport for Excel 2007.

New: Added ability to import hyperlinks from Excel spreadsheets as engineering links inMicroStation.

New: Added ability to Manage existing Excel chart pastes. So you can now change thepath stored in existing chart links and turn their automatic update setting on and off.

Changed: Changed the default font setting from "Set default font: {0 STANDARD}" to"Use same fonts as source document." These settings are located in “Settings | Text |Font”. This default is applied when user chooses “Settings | Restore Factory Defaults…”from the Settings box and when Microsoft Office Importer is first run or its INI file is notfound.

Changed: Improved the wording of various user interface text.

Fixed: A few situations where borders didn’t come in correctly when importing fromMicrosoft Office 2007.

Fixed: An abort when importing a specific Excel 2007 spreadsheet from one customer.

Fixed: A justification problem importing Word doc tables.

Fixed: When a row or column of a merged cell was hidden, Microsoft Office Importerdidn’t always correctly process subsequent merged cells. As a result, the wrong Excelcells would sometimes be omitted from the design file.

Fixed: Previously, {Reset} didn’t deactivate the {Manage} button. Now it does.

Version 8.9a — 29 May 2009Fixed: Updates of individual links (via Manage) would get the next available graphicgroup number instead of reusing their existing graphic group number. Fixed this sographic group numbers are reused. (The key-in “office updateall” already reused graphicgroup numbers.)

New: Added features in background to add support for Microsoft Office Importer links toAxiom’s RefManager 8.10a.


Improved: Microsoft Office Importer (office.ma) now loads three seconds faster thanprevious versions.

Fixed: Now the first line of multi-line text in merged Excel cells imports correctly. Thiswas reported by one customer.

Improved: When determining which graphic group number to use for a new paste,Microsoft Office Importer now checks the graphic group numbers of non-graphicelements, not just graphic elements. This was a problem in MicroStation V7 but appearsto not be a problem in MicroStation V8. Fixed in V8 anyway.

Version 8.8a — 13 February 2009New: Added support for Bentley ProjectWise V8.5, XM and V8i. Now Microsoft OfficeImporter can handle Excel spreadsheets and Word documents that reside insideProjectWise. The benefit of this is that updates after the initial paste are easy andautomatic.

New: Added support for MicroStation V8i.

Improved: Improved Manage Import Link box.

Improved: Made it possible to use Excel spreadsheet and Word document files with non-standard extensions. Previously, extensions had to be .xls, .xlsx, .doc or .docx.

Fixed: Handled a minor border formatting problem reported by one customer.

Changed: Turned on text height-to-width ratio lock by default in “Size” tab of “Text”settings category. Previously, it was off by default.

Version 8.7d — 16 October 2008Improved: Greatly improved handling of tabs. Now Word docs containing tabs shouldlook better than ever when imported into design files.

Fixed: Fixed a problem introduced by Microsoft Office (Excel) 2003 Service Pack 3(SP3) reported by multiple users. This version is recommended for anyone usingMicrosoft Office 2003 SP3.

Version 8.7c — 18 April 2008Fixed: Fixed chart scaling so charts now come into MicroStation at the correct sizerelative to normal spreadsheet data (cells). This makes it easy to get charts scaled justright. It’s a major improvement. Read the following technical note for more.

Technical note on chart scaling change: A big part of this change is that we nowscale charts relative to master units instead of positional units. But this means chartspasted in design files using old versions of Microsoft Office Importer are going to getreally big the next time Microsoft Office Importer updates them.


If you already have charts pasted into design files by Microsoft Office Importer you willneed to re-paste them with this new version (8.7c) so they will be scaled properly.

This has absolutely no impact on imported cells from Excel — it only applies toimported charts from Excel.

New: Added support for diagonal border lines when importing XLS files.

Fixed: A problem upgrading INI files from older versions of Office.

Fixed: Office mishandled paths containing an exclamation point '!'.

Fixed: Charts were not working for some non-English language versions of Excel.

Fixed: A line was shooting off beyond the boundary of a chart in one customer’s XLSfile.

Fixed: An abort handling two Office 2007 XLS files from two customers.

Fixed: The “Sheet Name:” field in “Manage Import Link” box is now disabled for DOClinks as this field only applies to XLS links.

Fixed: Fixed an unreported bug that would leave an instance of EXCEL.EXE open afterupdating a pasted chart in a design file.

Clarified user’s guide in many places.

Version 8.7b — 27 July 2007Fixed: Updates were not possible if the source spreadsheet was open. V8-only.

Version 8.7a — 15 June 2007New: Microsoft Office Importer can now import Excel charts into MicroStation.Microsoft Office Importer can also update the imported chart if the source spreadsheetchanges.

Version 8.6b — 12 January 2007Added new Axiom menu options for Microsoft Office Importer. Now, all of MicrosoftOffice Importer’s main functions can be accessed from the Axiom menu.

Made many user interface improvements to make Microsoft Office Importer easier thanever to use.


Version 8.6a — 13 October 2006Modified the “OFFICE UPDATEALL” key-in command so that it now requires a datapoint to accept the key-in.

After clicking the {Paste clipboard data into MicroStation} button the “Paste ______ datainto MicroStation” dialog now dynamically changes depending on the Microsoft Officeprogram the data is coming from. For example, it will read “Paste Excel data intoMicroStation” with Excel and “Paste Word data into MicroStation” with Word.

Improved the handling of justification in pasted text. Microsoft Office Importer now usesthe same justification setting as that of the data in the Excel file.

Modified various text strings to improve clarity.

Version 8.5e — 4 August 2006Added the key-in command “OFFICE UPDATEALL” so users can automatically updateall of the links inside their active model without closing and reopening it.

Updated the “Your settings have changed…” box that prompts user to save settings whenclosing Microsoft Office Importer.

Fixed a few minor bugs.

Version 8.5d — 10 May 2006There were sporadic instances were Microsoft Office Importer aborted while pasting anExcel spreadsheet into a design file. This was fixed.

Version 8.5c — 17 March 2006Microsoft Office Importer for V8 now supports Unicode fonts in Excel. This meansMicrosoft Office Importer for V8 can now import languages such as Greek, Chinese orJapanese into design files.

Version 8.5b — 23 September 2005Added the ability for Microsoft Office Importer to import fractions from Microsoft Excelas stacked fractions in MicroStation.

Added support for Microsoft Word’s “All caps” font format (“Format | Font... | Allcaps”.)


Version 8.5a — 30 June 2005Microsoft Office Importer can now match the settings from existing links. Settings willnow be taken from the pasted data and automatically entered into the active MicrosoftOffice Importer settings.

In rotated views, filled Excel cells would come in unrotated. This has been fixed.

Version 8.4a — 17 March 2005Added the ability to maintain cell background or “fill” color when importing Excelspreadsheets into MicroStation.

Microsoft Office Importer now gives users the ability to change the Excel spreadsheetsheet name in existing links. Previously, if the Excel sheet name was changed, the entirespreadsheet would have to be re-imported into a design file with Microsoft OfficeImporter. Now, through the Manage Import Link box, a user can specify the new sheetname, click the {Apply} button and thus reestablish the link between MicroStation andthe spreadsheet with the renamed sheet.

Version 8.3b — 7 January 2005Microsoft Office Importer now supports “Style” as a Text attribute.

Version 8.3a — 23 December 2004While using the “Manage Import Link” function, users will now be able to permanentlymodify the symbology of their existing spreadsheets or documents. Color, weight, styleand level attributes can now be modified even after a spreadsheet or document has beenimported into a design file.

Enhanced handling of graphic groups within design files.

Version 8.2a — 30 September 2004Added two new font handling options:

• Ability for user to specify a user-defined font for all imported text

• Ability to use the active font at time of paste for all imported textUsers can now change the range of existing Excel links. This feature is especiallyimportant to users who add new columns or rows to their spreadsheets but do not usenamed ranges in Excel.


Users can now define a list of named pairs of text height and width values. That list isavailable at paste time, which is especially valuable to users who work at multiple scalesand thus need quick access to different height/width settings for their imported text.

We now refer to “Borders” not “Table Lines”.

We added a lock to the settings for text height and width that you can use toautomatically maintain the ratio between these numbers.

The Link Information box was not always displayed rotated when the linked elementswere displayed in a rotated view. This was fixed.

Version 8.1b — 2 January 2004In this version we added support for a MicroStation configuration variable, OFFICE_INI.You can use it to store a directory path or full file spec for Microsoft Office Importersettings files. This was requested by users who run Microsoft Office Importer from aserver — enables them to save and automatically reload their own settings.

We added support for hairline borders in Excel files. Previously they did not display inMicroStation.

There were some instances of text truncation when the text size in an Excel paste was settoo large. We handled this problem.

Version 8.1a — 23 October 2003This version supports long file names and file names containing spaces in links.

We implemented basic Excel XP support.

In response to popular demand, we changed the default settings file that is loaded whenyou open Microsoft Office Importer to be the last settings file used.

In previous versions, Microsoft Office Importer would only update a paste automaticallywhen the file was opened from the MicroStation Manager box. Now it will also updatewhen using a “File | Open...” or MicroStation “RD” command from inside MicroStation.As part of this feature we changed the default of the option “Unload Microsoft OfficeImporter automatically when automatic updates are completed.” This option now defaultsto Off. This allows Microsoft Office Importer to be active during “File | Open...” and“RD” load activities subsequent to the opening of a design design file.

Microsoft Office Importer sometimes had difficulty locating the source document when aV7 format file was run in V8 with OPEN_V7 mode. This was fixed.

The settings category name “Table” was changed to “Table lines” to be more descriptive.

When pasting into a rotated view, the paste was occurring at a distance from the cursorposition. This was fixed.

There was a problem with Windows 2000 pastes when “track changes” was turned onduring the paste. Sometimes deleted text appeared in the pasted text. This was handled.


Version 8.0b — 17 January 2003The default setting for the non-text area width was changed to 1.3. This was done tomatch a change in version 3.3a that improved the spacing of text in cells.

The tags that save settings information were changed to not have graphic group numbersassigned. The association of the tags to the imported elements ensures that the tags aremanipulated as part of the graphic group. This prevents a problem where the settingsinformation for linking was lost when an imported area was copied and then updated.

A formatting problem was fixed where lines of text imported from Word documentswould have a wrong character spacing where text formatting changed from one style toanother.

A checkbox option labeled “Always use family” was added to the “By font family”settings tab. This allows you to force the conversion of a font in imported text to anotherfont. This removes the limitation described under “Not yet supported” in the “Version8.0a for V8” section below.

A problem with the left side of an import not aligning with a tentative snap point wasfixed.

Version 8.0a — 1 July 2002This is the initial release of Microsoft Office Importer for MicroStation version 8. (V8)

Version 8.0a is functionally equivalent to version 3.2a for MicroStation version 7. Theonly changes relate to features unique to MicroStation V8 and are:

1. The Settings fields for Text and Table are changed to include a By Level option.

2. By default all text is imported as text nodes with the source document formattingpreserved. There is an option to import text as V7 type of text nodes, which will forcethe same formatting for all text elements in a text node.

officev8

Documents

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