How can I use Excel inside KE-chain?
KE-chain understands the importance of Excel is the engineering industry. Therefore the importing and exporting to and from Excel of Parts and Properties should be done as smoothly as possible.
These two actions can only be performed on Basic table or Paginated table widgets. These two widgets can be configured with the Upload or Download buttons in order to be able to export or import using Excel (for more information on how to configure a widget, please check this page).
Exporting to Excel
Clicking the button configured on the widget will trigger the download of an Excel file which will contain the same structure as the original table. The table is exported exactly it is visualized in the Excel, with the following exceptions:
- Attachment properties are not downloaded. However, the link towards where they are stored in KE-chain is provided and can be easily accessed from Excel;
- Part, Activity and User reference properties are not clickable;
- Geographical information property values are also not clickable;
- Decimal separators or other visual options are not exported (decimal numbers are still decimal numbers, but the separator might differ based on your local settings);
Figure 1 - A simple table in KE-chain using different type of properties
Figure 2 - An Excel table exported from the KE-chain table above.
Importing from Excel
Clicking the button configured on top of the widget will trigger the upload of an Excel file. For a smooth import, it is recommended that you first download the Excel associated to the table and then make the necessary changes before importing it back. Keep in mind that any parts already existing when the Excel is exported will simply be edited and not added again to KE-chain. All properties are supported for import, with the following exceptions:
- Attachment properties;
- Weather information properties;
- Geographical information properties;
This means that if you try to import values for these type of properties, nothing will happen. The already existing values will remain unchanged and nothing will be added to newly created parts.
Figure 3 - Excel file used for the import. Green means new rows have been added, while yellow means some of the ones existing from the export have been edited.
Figure 4 - KE-chain table after import. The new rows have been inserted, while the ones already there have just been edited.
As can been observed, the "Rio de Janeiro" row has been eliminated from the Excel file. However, deletion is a sensitive process and is completely not supported through the Excel importer. The row containing "Delft" has been renamed to "Amsterdam". Unsupported properties, such as "Location" and "Coat of arms" have been left unchanged.