[Doug McLean]

In a word, no, but the data can be exported.

[Vince French]

I’ve found how to export the data for individual forms but unfortunately this won’t work for the workflow that I was looking at.

Oh well, time to look for another solution.

[David Cutler]

Could you use Power Query to bring the data sets from your forms and your markup list together?

[Vince French]

I could at @David Cutler but it would appear that each form would need to be exported individually which won’t work for me as I could have hundreds of them.

I’ll keep looking for another solution. 😃

[David Cutler]

Seems as if I remember discussing exporting form data during a MCR session. I’ll see if I jotted anything down in my notes….

[David Cutler]

Have you tried “Merging” the data @Vince ?

Jason Artley emailed me a follow up to the “Forms” MCR back in June (Thank you Jason!). In his words “Exporting Data is intended for one form at a time…” “Merging Data will allow you to combine all of the data from different forms into a single CSV or XML file. These fields do not need to be open to do this, so this is a super-fast way to consolidate that data.”

Perhaps this will help?

[Liz Larsen]

Nice! I did not know this option existed. I don’t work with forms a lot, so I’d love to hear the results once @Vince tests this.

[Vince French]

That’s great @David Cutler ! I’ll definitely have a play about with this feature!

[Liz Larsen]

@Vince

Are the forms identical?

How many pages long is each form?

(I might be able to do it with JavaScript… No promises, though)

[Vince French]

Hi @Liz

I’m still playing about with this one at the moment so am not 100% sure of what the actual content will be. However, I do know that the forms will all be a standard format once finalised.

My next big issue is that I want to place the Forms within Spaces in order that I can automatically allocate the content of the form, along with any measures, when I get to Power Query.

I know I’m not explaining this very well at the moment but hopefully I’ll be able to show what I mean in a week or two.

[David Cutler]

Could you gather the information in a series text boxes that were grouped and saved as a custom “tool” @Vince ? Text box information would show in the markups list and include the space assignment.

[Liz Larsen]

I don’t know that this would provide the type of solution he’s looking for. Is there a way to export that markup info without individually opening every single PDF?

[David Cutler]

That’s a good question @lizlarsen

I typically work in a single, multi-page pdf file so all of my markups are extracted into a single .CSV file.

I’m not sure how this would work with a drawing set.

If he is working in single sheets he could always merge them together before extracting his info.

So many options!

[Liz Larsen]

@David Cutler, I was also thinking that the PDFs would have to be merged before doing any sort of data processing on them.

[Vince French]

Hi @Liz. I tend to work with multipage files as @David Cutler does.

For measuring groundworks this is typically somewhere between 5 and 50 pages at a time. However, the workflow that I am looking at now is for Brickwork and Scaffolding and may involve in excess of 500 pages if I want to keep all of the information in one location. Not every page would need a form though. There are probably 5 to 10 drawings per housetype and only one form would be needed for each of these types.

The great thing about using Power Query is that it can pull information in from different sources. This means that if I can get the forms working, I could merge and export that data to one csv file and then have another one for the markup list info.

[Vince French]

Hi @David Cutler – the problem with grouping markups is that you lose the details when you export to the csv file. But I am currently looking at named individual text boxes as a possible solution.

[David Cutler]

I guess you could apply the group as a markup and then “ungroup” it prior to exporting to the CSV…

Unless perhaps there is a setting that expands grouped markups when exporting….

Maybe a Javascript routine to “Ungroup all groups”?

Maybe a candidate for a future feature?

Another work around idea would be to setup a “template” file that has all of the text boxes that you are looking to use repeatedly, arranged as you like. You could then select all, copy the selection and then paste that “collection” as needed into your document. Not a clean as having them as one single custom tool, but it would save you ungrouping dozens of grouped markups.

[Vince French]

All good ideas @David Cutler – no doubt I will work through them all to see what works best.