18.01.03 Connecting Your Excel Workbook to a Takeoff Bid

Last Updated: 2023-07-27 09:23

Caution

The Live Link Add-in has been discontinued by ConstructConnect effective 6/1/2023 and can no longer be downloaded or installed. If you are already using Live Link, it will continue to function for some time, although we no longer provide support for this feature.

We encourage you to review the Related Articles at the bottom of this article on ways of exporting your takeoff results to Excel (and other formats).

Note

Once connected to a Takeoff bid, a workbook remains linked to that Bid. You can link the workbook to a different Takeoff Bid only if you click "Save As" in Excel to create a copy of the workbook (which prompts you to remove the Live Link). See Related Articles for more information.

Connecting to a Takeoff Bid

If Excel is not open, go ahead and open it and open the workbook to which you want to link a Takeoff bid. ConstructConnect Takeoff opens automatically when you click the "Connect" button.

Sample Workbooks

We install three sample Excel workbooks for you to use to get familiar with Live Link - navigate to your User Documents folder to find them.

Sample workbooks are added to your Documents folder

Click on the ConstructConnect tab in the Excel ribbon, this opens the Excel Live Link toolbar.

CC-Takeoff Excel Live Link toolbar

Click the green Connect button.

After a few seconds, the "ConstructConnect Projects and Bids" list opens. This is a list of every project in your Organization to which you have at least "Read/View" access.

Live Link Takeoff project list

You can sort by either column - click the column header to sort ascending, click again to sort descending.

To see the bids within a project, click the arrow to the left of the Project No.

CCTO Excel Live link project and bid list, Connect button active

Once you have located the bid to which you want to link the active workbook, highlight the bid and click the blue Connect button.

The Live Link panel is added to Excel.

CCTO Takeoff Items showing in Excel

After connecting,

The banner at the top of the Conditions panel in Takeoff indicates the workbook (Excel file) to which this bid is connected.
The connected project and bid names are shown at the top of the Excel Live Link panel.
All Conditions from Takeoff are shown in the Takeoff Items section, even if they have not been used to perform takeoff.
There is an indicator next to the words "ConstructConnect" in the menu bar in Excel to indicate the workbook is now connected to a Takeoff bid.

Excel Live Link connected icon

Congratulations! You have now connected Excel to your Takeoff bid. Next up, let's take a look at that Live Link panel.

The ConstructConnect Ribbon Bar

The Live Link Panel in Excel