Excel as Draft
PremiumImport Excel (.xlsx) spreadsheets as visual tables in Revit drafting views with grid lines, text notes, and one-click refresh from source. · Explore the live interface below - every control works exactly as it does inside Revit®.
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Test it Live - exactly as if you are in Revit
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Get Started in Minutes
Four simple steps to bring Excel as Draft directly into your Revit® environment.
1
Create Account
Sign up for a free NexionTools account - no credit card required.
2
Download Installer
One installer, 52 professional Revit® tools. Under 15 MB.
3
Open Revit
Excel as Draft appears in your ribbon automatically - ready to use.
4
Activate License
Enter your Premium key to unlock full features.
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Why Excel as Draft exists
Some tables do not belong in a Revit schedule. A door hardware set from a specialist, a fire strategy matrix, a client-issued room brief - the data lives in Excel, it needs to appear on a sheet, and Revit has no way to bring it in. So it gets screenshotted, or retyped into a drafting view as text, and then the spreadsheet is revised.
How Excel as Draft works
Browse to the .xlsx file and pick the worksheet you want.
A preview shows the first rows and columns so you know you picked the right sheet before anything is created.
Choose whether to draw grid lines and whether to bold the first row as a header.
The tool creates a new drafting view containing the table as real Revit text with detail lines for the grid - so it prints and scales like anything else on a sheet. The view is created at 1:1, a name collision gets a numbered suffix automatically, and it switches you to the new view when it finishes. The whole import is one undo entry.
The source file path and the worksheet name are stamped into the view's Description, so months later you can still tell where a table came from.
Before
External tables get screenshotted onto sheets or retyped by hand, and neither survives a revision well.
After
The spreadsheet becomes a drafting view of real Revit annotation that you can place on a sheet.
When to reach for it
- A specialist's schedule that never existed as Revit data - hardware sets, fire strategy matrices.
- Client-issued tables that have to appear in the drawing set verbatim.
- Any table where the source of truth is genuinely a spreadsheet, not the model.
What it does not do
- It is a one-way import that creates a snapshot. Re-import after the spreadsheet changes; there is no live link.
- It builds text and lines, not a Revit schedule. Nothing in it is connected to model data.
- Column widths and row heights carry over from the spreadsheet, within sensible limits, so the table keeps its shape. Cell colours, merged cells and complex layouts do not survive - you get grid lines and a bold header row.
- The project needs a drafting view type available. Without one, nothing happens and no error is shown.
- Numbers come across as text, and any cell or grid line that fails to place is skipped without a warning - worth a glance over a large table before you put it on a sheet.
- Very large sheets become very large drafting views; this is for tables meant to fit on a drawing.
Questions
- How do I get an Excel table into Revit?
- Revit has no Excel import for annotation. The usual workarounds are a screenshot, which does not print well, or retyping. This creates a drafting view containing the table as native text and detail lines.
- Does it stay linked to the spreadsheet?
- No. It is a snapshot at the moment of import. If the spreadsheet is revised, import it again.
- Will my cell formatting come across?
- The proportions do - column widths and row heights are read from the spreadsheet and carried across within sensible limits, so the table is not a uniform grid. What does not survive is cell colours, merged cells and complex layouts; you get optional grid lines and a bold header row.