It’s been a crazy busy couple of weeks for announcements, and they’re not quite over yet, but I thought I’d take a quick break from news and post an actual tip. I was working with some tables recently, and had a couple that were data linked to Excel spreadsheets, but I didn’t need to keep the link any more. I just wanted the table data in AutoCAD LT. I ended up having to do a little research before I could do this, so now you get the benefit of my findings. The obvious place to start was in the Data Link Manager (on the Insert tab of the ribbon). Right-clicking on the data link shows a “delete” option. (Remember? When in doubt…right-click.) But when I tried that, I got a message that said, “The data link is being used and cannot be deleted.” Okay then. Apparently you need to get rid of the link before you get rid of the link…sort of like removing objects from layers before you can purge them. So I go back to my table. The tricky bit here is that in order to find the “Detach Data Link” option, you need to have a table cell selected. Not the entire table, just one or more cells. Once you’ve detached the data link, then you can go back to the Data Link Manager and remove the data link itself. After saying “okay” to a couple of dialogs making sure you know you’re about to remove the link and create a static table instead, you’re all set. Hopefully this will save you some time if you ever have to detach your own data links.

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