Excel Spreadsheet Integration

Will Dellapenna · 2025-08-13T18:29:17+00:00

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I use Bluebeam to plan prefabrication builds for my company's pre-fab shop and I'm looking for ways to better integrate my Excel spreadsheets with my Bluebeam plans.

I plan assembly types by placing markups on a drawing (pre-formatted text boxes with the assembly label which I've save to a tool chest). I then use the Markup List to count the quantity of assemblies and manually enter those into a spreadsheet. 1) Is there a way to automate this manual data entry? I'd love if I can just import the quantities directly.

This spreadsheet is then formatted to automatically count the specific BOM I need for the entire pre-fab package build (eg, if Assembly type A needs (1) of widget 1, (2) of widget 2 and (1) of widget 3 and there are a total of (20) of Assembly type A, it will add up the total number of each widget needed, including across all assembly types). I then have to manually enter the total quantity of each widget and assembly type into form fields I've preformatted on a different Bluebeam PDF. 2) Is there a way to automatically populate form fields from cells on an Excel spreadsheet?

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Comments

Isaac.Harned

You will probably want to go one of two routes. Either export your markups list as CSV and use Excel Visual Basic coding (AI LLM's are you're best frined) to clean the data to simple quantities, then use a lookup table to match and place, OR @Doug McLean has some more advanced workflows involving power query which can have a preset cleaning process. Both are somewhat similar, but it probably more depends on if you are just catching simple totals, or if you are getting an extensive amount of data from them.

You may also see the quantity link process, but this would take manually setting up the link to each cell every time you go to a new file. Typically I do not recommend this route, but who knows what improvements will be added over time to this.

Doug McLean

Your very best bet, as @Isaac.Harned said is to export your markups as a .csv file then to let Excel do its magic.

My main issue with Quantity Link is that it only brings in measurements, not any additional data you may want that you have in custom columns. It can also be a pain to set up if you use Spaces because you can't simply create a template.

Once its in a csv file, my go to at that point is Power Query. Its already in Excel under the Data tab, so there's nothing new to buy. There is a learning curve though.

I would suggest starting with someone like (all on YouTube) Leila Gharani at XelPlus or Mike Girvin at ExeclIsFun or Mynda Tracey at MyOnlineTraing Hub. These three have excellent beginner level videos for Power Query.
If you're wanting to take an entire course, I would suggest Skillwave Training's Power Query Academy.
There are also several very good books on the subject. (M is for Data Monkey has been the starter book for most of the current MVP's if that tells you anything).

Power Query will change the way you look at and use Excel.

Doug McLean

I would also change your Text boxes to Count tools, after all that's what you're doing anyways. You can assign each one a specific Subject and a Label as well as various attributes.
You can also use Spaces to create an assembly. When you drop your tools inside the Space, Revu will automatically sort them within that Space. (I'll actually be demonstrating this in the next CANBug meeting, so sign up 😁)

Populating PDF form fields from Excel is something reserved for JavaScript. It's doable, you just have to know what you're doing. That one I'll leave with @Isaac.Harned as he's WAY better at JavaScript than I am.

David Cutler

@Isaac.Harned and @Doug McLean have you off to a great start @Will Dellapenna on getting the information out of Revu.

For bringing it back into a PDF I have a couple of ideas that you could try, depending upon how you use the resulting data.

If you just need the information you can select a group of cells in you Excel sheet, copy them with Ctrl-C and then paste the copied cell as an image into your PDF. I uses this when reviewing material quotes where I use Excel as an "adding machine" and the pasted image as the "tape". Depending upon how fancy you want to get you could have your Excel sheet setup where the data maps into the right places in your PDF.

Another option you could try would be to print your Excel to a PDF, then run the OCR routine. This should give you selectable text that you could copy and paste into your form fields. It's still a bit of a manual process, but it turns a bunch of typing into mouse copy/paste work.

Keep us posted on what you come up with.😎

Don Walke

Another thought, if you have a tool for each Assembly Type, you could assign a custom Number column for each Widget Type. All you would do then is input the number and type of Widgets in each assembly tool. As you add the different types of assemblies to the document, the widget columns would be populated with the widgets required. Total the widget columns and there you have it. Add a simple CSV export to excel. By the way, I thought widgets were way outdated and everyone was using thing-a-ma-gigs nowadays.

Isaac.Harned

One way is to create an FDF file from the excel inputs. VBA can run the conversion, then you just have to import to PDF. A good way to see how this is done is just by taking your blank form, Export Data as FDF, then open the file in notepad. You should see a precursor to the field values that gives version of the FDF generator, path to the original file, a unique identifier for the PDF, then field names and values formatted as "<< /T(FieldName) /V(FieldValue) >>". It then ends the data with a closing section marking the end of the data and file. Throw your whole string into and LLM model and have it generate code to transform whichever cells you need into FDF data.

There is also a way to import directly from excel without the FDF middle man, alothough I have less experience using it, I think it's the readFileIntoString function if I remember @Mitch Youngs work correctly. If you need we can figure that out, but Chat GPT should also be able to work through that.

Mitch Youngs

To simplify data transfer between Bluebeam and Excel I highly recommend the following.

Data from Bluebeam to Excel should be in .CSV format
Data from Excel to Bluebeam should be .FDF format
A fillable form template file should be created to receive data from Excel or that you match the name of the form fields exactly.

The workflow I suggest in this case

Use CSV Summary (next to the filter list on markups list) to export your quantity of assemblies to excel.
1. This could be done an number of ways either with counts or custom columns just be consistent.
Set up an Excel file to act as a template that has a table where you can import the csv data and automatically organize it.
1. This will likely be a macro enabled excel doc so it can create the FDF file after this step.
2. There is a way to create a Excel add-in to avoid any macro enabled files but that doesn't seem necessary to do in this case.
Now that your data is in the excel table you can use VBA to generate an FDF file that you can import to Bluebeam.

If you want any examples or additional guidance on this I'm happy to help.