Let's start by exporting an existing station to Excel and discover how the Excel file is structured.

Export your first station

  1. Start a station which contains a few drivers and some devices & points.
  2. Open the workbench tool called Active Pro Excel Export.
  3. Select the Ord for the Base from which your components will be exported. Copy paste the Ord or hit the button next to the field to select a component. Example: Here only the components in the Drivers Folder will be exported

  4. In the Destination File, select an existing excel file to override or define the path to a new one. Example: C:/Niagara/Niagara-4.7.109.20/excel/export.xlsx

    Since the 50.0.15.0 only .xlsx files are supported





  5. Hit Ok. A log console will appear to show you what's being done by the system. It's going to be very helpful to track issues when you won't get what you expect. You can filter the messages by a search or select to see only the warnings or severe errors.



  6. Open the Excel file that was created and let's explore what's in it.



Excel sheet exploration

There are 5 sheets by default. Let's focus now on the "Default" one.


It's the one containing the content of the station that has been exported. And by default, it's all the networks, devices and points that were located in slot:Drivers/

What do we see here?

Each line represents a component in the station: a driver, a device, a point...

Those first 4 columns are the most important columns. All the others on the right are optional (and there are many other possible columns).

  • The Base column (2nd column), represents the parent of the component defined on the line, e.g. where it is located. Example above, the BacnetNetwork is located in the drivers.
  • The Internal Id (1st column) is a reference to reuse the component defined on the line, if we want to put something inside. Example: The first line defines an id #BacnetNetwork. So in the second line, a device called "AHU 01" is defined inside this network.
  • The name (4th column) is the name of the component defined in the station. It looks similar to the id, but remember that the id is just for the Excel file, it can be anything and won't appear in the station. Another difference is that the name can be duplicated in the station. The identifier must be unique for the entire Excel file.
  • The 3rd column is the model used to create the component. Since you exported an unknown station for the system, it doesn't know how components were created, this is why this column is empty.

There are # and $

# stands for ids (or references). You define an id in the first column for a component and can reuse it when you want to reference this component somewhere else in the Excel file.

$ stands for variables. Variables are used as shortcuts to avoid repeating long text. Example: $Drivers stands for slot:/Drivers and $Bool stands for control:BooleanPoint. We're going to use a lot of them for the import.


Variables are defined in the Variables sheet.

  • They always use the $ prefix. 
  • You can define in a variable a path. Example: slot:/Drivers
  • Or a typespec: moduleName:JAVAClass Example: control:NumericPoint



Export more than drivers, devices and points

This is defined in the "Structure" sheet. The system can export different content into different sheets.

By default, only one sheet is defined, the "Default", we've explored just before. The system uses a NEQL query to find what to export.

This default query means "Get me everything that is either a network, or a device, or a point which has not null proxy extension".


You can modify it or define new sheets, with other predicates. Example: 

So if you export again using the same export file (don't forget to close it before), you would end up with 2 new Sheets



Change default config files

When the system exports into a new file, it uses a default config file, defined in the "Default Config" field below:


This file is located in your Workbench User Home, in the shared folder. Example: C:\Users\myusername\Niagara4.7\tridium\shared\excel\export

There are three files here:

  • A default one. The one with the lightest config
  • A defaultActive one if you export a station based on Active-Framework
  • An advanced one containing almost every possibility of columns
  • A default import one. This one already contains a Default Date Sheet that you can fill and import.
  • A defaultModel one if you want to import/export components in your Model

You can personalize them or, more recommended, create new ones. then in the export popup, change the path to your new file in the config field.

Next Step

Step 3 Import your first Excel file