The World is not Just Black and White with Ideate Sticky!

Every day, our Ideate Software Support team fields all types of questions from AECO professionals all around the world. 


Thousands of Revit users all around the world use Ideate Sticky every day to combine the ease and flexibility of Excel, Word, and PDF editing with the convenience of a sticky note. Ideate Sticky elegantly connects non-BIM data from an Excel, Word, or PDF document into Revit projects, enhancing cross-team workflows.


A customer contacted us to ask why the cell fill color and the colored text in Excel was displaying only black and white when they linked the Excel file into Revit as a Sticky schedule.


Several situations can prevent the desired colors from displaying within Revit.


  1. Excel may have an override Black and White setting selected within the Sheet tab of the Page Setup dialog. This will cause any Excel file to be black and white within either a Schedule or Image for Ideate Sticky. It’s important to understand that this setting will override any color setting you may have selected within Ideate Sticky Images method shown below.
Ideate Sticky - Override Color Setting

2.  If you are using the Images method within Ideate Sticky, there are additional settings to override the Excel, PDF, or Word document to Black and White or Grayscale. You can also make the background transparent which is extremely useful when you have multiple images on a view or sheet that are close to each other.

Ideate Sticky - Colors

3.  Conditional formatting is currently not supported within the Ideate Sticky Schedules method. Color fills, text overrides, etc., that are a result of conditional formatting will be ignored. The underlying cell formatting, which can be seen when you place your cursor within the cell, will be utilized instead. However, this conditional formatting is now supported within the Ideate Sticky Images method. 


At the end of the day, this specific customer had the override Black and White checkbox selected within Excel. Unchecking that selection within Excel produced the desired colors within the Ideate Sticky schedule.

Explore recent posts

Batch Create Parameters for Revit Families with Ideate Automation
July 18, 2025
TRAINING - VIDEO | Batch Update Revit Families—The Smart Way. Speed up your Revit family management with Ideate Automation + Ideate BIMLink! In this new workflow, you can batch update RFA files, create parameters from Excel, and generate detailed reports—no manual editing needed.
Export DWGs with Customized Names Using Ideate Automation
July 18, 2025
TRAINING - VIDEO | Custom DWG Naming, the Smart Way. Take control of your DWG exports with Ideate Automation + Ideate Renumber! Now you can create custom renumbering rules that meet ISO 19650 or any project standard—no need to embed the rule in your Revit file.
Export Files with Customized Names Using Ideate Automation
July 18, 2025
TRAINING - VIDEO | Smarter DWG Export Just Dropped! A long-requested feature is finally here—automatically rename your DWG Revit exports using Ideate Automation and Ideate Renumber!
Open Revit Models Using Ideate Automation
July 18, 2025
TRAINING - VIDEO | New Time-Saving Feature Alert! We just made your Revit workflows even smoother. With Ideate Automation, you can now open Revit Cloud or local models directly—no more manual launching or version mismatches.
Show More