18.01 Using the ConstructConnect Live Link™ Add-In for Excel™

The ConstructConnect Live Link Add-In allows you to connect takeoff results for a ConstructConnect bid to a Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet. Got that perfect template spreadsheet you want to use with ConstructConnect Takeoff? Great - we'll show you how you select a project and then map Takeoff Items' Results to cells in that spreadsheet.

Your workbook links directly to the data in our Cloud Servers. Any changes made to the takeoff Results, by anyone in your organization, update real-time in Excel (unless you disconnect Excel from Takeoff temporarily). ConstructConnect Takeoff must be open when using Live Link (it opens automatically when you try to Connect a spreadsheet to a project in Excel or open an existing, linked spreadsheet).

Overview Video

You may want to come back and watch this video again when you are using Live Link.

Requirements

• You must have a login and takeoff license for ConstructConnect Takeoff.
• You must install ConstructConnect Takeoff on the machine where Excel is installed (the Live Link Add-in is a separate installation that runs the first time you launch the Takeoff application).
• You must use a locally-installed edition of Microsoft Excel (only Excel is supported). Web Apps do not work with Excel Live Link.
• You must be using Excel 2010 or newer (your version of Excel must be under mainstream support with Microsoft).
• You must use the XLSX Excel file format - other file types will not work. 
• Obviously, your computer must be connected to the internet.

Workflow

In the next few articles, we walk you through:

• Enabling the Add-in (usually, the Add-in gets enabled automatically when you install Takeoff)
• Connecting to a Takeoff project
• Linking a cell to a Takeoff Item Result
• Disconnecting (Pausing) the spreadsheet from the Takeoff project

Settings - Image Legend

Enabling the Excel Add-In