Working with tables in your drawings and exporting them to Excel has never been so easy. Now, the tables in ARES Commander allow to include formulas, in the same way, that we would do it in programs like Excel.

In this example, we are going to obtain the total of trees that we have in this project. We select the cell and choose the SUMMARY formula.

Now, we indicate with two clicks the area that includes the values that we want to add. Observe that the formula has been written and press Create Note, and thus we obtain the result.

Other functions could be to add a new column. We click on this cell, and right click to choose Insert, Column on the right. A column includes the unit prices of each tree.

In the new column, we will obtain the total cost for each species, in addition to the total cost of the project. Now, let’s write the formula as follows: We start with the “=” symbol followed by cell “C3” multiplied by cell “D3” and press ENTER.

Now, we copy the cell of the formula, and paste it in the lower cell, obtaining directly the value adjusted to this new row. Like Excel, ARES Commander allows you to logically work with a table.

Let’s try again. Copy and paste in the next cell. If we double click, we can verify that the formula has been updated, keeping the columns but updating the numerical position. We can also select the cell and write the formula directly in the properties palette.

To obtain the total cost of investment in trees, we can choose the SUM formula, and define the area that includes all the values that we want to take into account in the sum.

Now, we could modify the number of trees, and observe as well as the total values are automatically adjusted to the new data.

The EXPORT TABLE command allows you to select a table and create a CSV extension file with all the data it includes. This CSV extension file can be imported into Excel, taking into account that it is a text format and does not contain the original formulas.

Although it is true that we could quickly recompose it in Excel, if necessary. As you know, changing the look of a table in Excel is very simple.

Even the values that we import and that are shown as numbers, we can convert them easily through formulas. After modifying the appearance of the tables in Excel, we can select it, and then copy and paste it into an ARES Commander drawing.

The table that we paste from Excel, is an external reference that we can edit directly in ARES Commander. For example to modify some of the values and see how is modified the total of the different associated operations.

This second method works with the excel file as an external reference, which forces us to use 2 files for the same project. However, ARES Commander allows that after selecting the table in EXCEL and copying it, we can insert it with the PASTE SELECTED tool, where we can determine if we want to insert the table as an external reference (the same as in the previous example). Or use the PASTE option, and then choose TEXT AS TABLE that converts it into an ARES Commander table, with the advantage that formulas written in Excel, are now kept within ARES Commander.

To learn more about ARES Commander, and the tools it offers to work with tables, do not miss the extensive help offered by the program, pressing F1.

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