Is it possible to map a cell in Excel to a document property?

Many people want to be able to utilize the data in their documents or CAD files to populate their document/file properties and thus map this data to their document management system.

Excel spreadsheets often have lots of data in them which relate to the properties of the document itself, such as; client, PO number, cost, etc.  In this blog I’m going to show you how quick and easy it is to set up a document property which is linked to cell data and use this property to populate Autodesk Vault properties. First you need an Excel document with some data.

The cells which have data you wish to extract will need to have ‘Defined Names,’ the example above shows that I have define cell C4 with the name ‘Client’, defined names are often used for formulas, but we can use this name to map a cell to a document property. To define a name to a cell select cell you wish to define, go to the Formulas tab and select ‘Define Name’.

Here you can see that I will define cell ‘C7’ as ‘Cost’.

The next step is to create a custom document property for cost; select the file tab and then the drop-down menu for properties so that you can select Advanced Properties.

Here we can create custom properties and link the properties to content within the document.

Once the document is saved we can check it into Vault. This file can be used as a reference by the Vault Administrator to create a property mapping.

The Vault will need to be re-indexed to incorporate these chances to existing files within the Vault.

Once indexed your mapping from an Excel cell to Vault property is complete, changing the value in the cell will update the document property and subsequently the property mapped in the Vault.

In my example below the Client property is ‘Client Name is Chris’ and the Cost property is ‘£99.69’.

Then I check out the file and update the cell data to ‘Client Name is DAVE’ and cost to £21.90, then save and checked in.

To conclude mapping properties to cell data can save time help and maintain document metadata accurately, it is possible to use this data to incorporate in data management systems making files easy to categorise, store and find.