Why SOLIDWORKS BOM Cells Turn Blue When Edited (And How to Fix It in PDF Exports)

Why BOM Cells Turn Blue

When you manually edit a BOM cell in a SolidWorks drawing — typing directly into the cell to change a description, quantity, or part number — the cell background turns blue. This is intentional behavior, not a display bug.

The blue indicates an override: the cell value is no longer driven by the corresponding model custom property. SolidWorks decouples the cell from the model the moment you type in it, and it marks that decoupled state visually so you (and anyone reviewing the drawing) know the value in the BOM doesn’t necessarily match what the 3D model says.

The exact color is configurable — it defaults to blue, but it’s just an indicator. The underlying state is the override flag on the cell, not the color itself.

What “Override” Means in Practice

SolidWorks BOMs are live tables by default. When you insert a BOM, each row maps to a component in the assembly, and each column maps to a custom property (description, material, part number, revision, etc.) or a computed value (quantity). If you update the custom property on the model, the BOM cell updates automatically.

When you override a cell, that link breaks for that specific cell. The model custom property may change, but the BOM cell stays at whatever you typed in. If you update the model and rebuild the drawing, you will NOT see the change in overridden cells — only in cells that are still linked.

This is the reason SolidWorks makes the override visible. A BOM with silent overrides that don’t update is a BOM that will diverge from reality without warning. The blue is the warning.

When overrides are intentional:

Sometimes you want to override — the BOM description needs to say something slightly different from what’s in the custom property, or you’re adding a purchased-part note that doesn’t belong in the model. In those cases, the override is correct behavior and the blue is just documentation that a human edited this value.

When overrides are accidental:

Engineers frequently click into BOM cells by mistake, hit a key, and create an override they didn’t intend. Now the cell is blue and won’t update when the model changes. This is especially common with quantity cells — typing 1 to “confirm” the quantity actually overrides it, meaning future assembly structure changes won’t reflect in that row.

How to Reset BOM Cell Overrides

To remove the override and restore the live link to the model:

Single cell: Right-click the overridden (blue) cell > Reset Value from Custom Property. The cell value returns to whatever the model custom property currently says and the blue disappears.

Entire BOM: Right-click anywhere in the BOM > Table Properties > Reset Overrides. This clears all overrides in the table and relinks every cell to the model. Use with caution — any intentional overrides you set will also be cleared.

Specific column: Right-click the column header > Reset Column. Clears overrides for every cell in that column.

After resetting, rebuild the drawing (Ctrl+Q) to confirm the values populate correctly from the current model state.

Why the Blue Shows Up in PDF Exports

The blue override indicator is a property of the drawing view, not a screen-only decoration. When you export a drawing to PDF via File > Save As > PDF (the native SolidWorks PDF path), the drawing view is rendered as vector geometry into the PDF — and that includes the blue cell background.

This catches teams by surprise because the blue looks like a UI annotation (something you’d see on screen but not print). It’s not. It’s actual cell formatting applied to the table’s cells, and it exports exactly as you see it.

The result: your manufacturing release PDF shows blue-highlighted BOM cells, which looks unfinished or raises questions from the shop floor.

Fix Option 1: Reset the overrides before exporting

The cleanest fix. Right-click > Reset Overrides before exporting to PDF. The table is now live-linked, no blue cells, and the PDF looks clean. The drawback: if the overrides are intentional, resetting them also loses your customized values.

Fix Option 2: Disable the override indicator color

Go to Tools > Options > Document Properties > Tables > BOM Table. There’s an option for “Override indicator color” (the exact UI label varies by version — in SolidWorks 2024+ it’s under the Tables subsection). Change the color from blue to white (RGB 255, 255, 255), or uncheck the indicator entirely if the option exists in your version.

With the indicator set to white, overridden cells have a white background — same as non-overridden cells. The override is still there (the cell is still decoupled from the model), but it’s invisible in both the on-screen view and the PDF export.

Side effect: You lose the visual warning that a cell is overridden. If a colleague edits a cell and the indicator is invisible, there’s no signal that the BOM has diverged from the model. This is a documentation trade-off — useful when you’re certain all overrides are intentional and correct.

Fix Option 3: Use Print to PDF instead of Save As PDF

File > Print (using a PDF printer driver like Microsoft Print to PDF) applies the drawing’s print settings, which by default render the drawing the same way it would print to paper. In some SolidWorks versions and configurations, the override color is suppressed in the print path even when it appears in Save As PDF. This is inconsistent across versions and is not a reliable solution, but it’s worth checking if you’re on a version where Save As PDF shows blue and you can’t modify Document Properties per fix option 2.

The behavior difference between Save As PDF and Print to PDF is documented in our Save As PDF vs Print to PDF guide — the rendering paths are different under the hood and produce different results for certain drawing elements.

Detecting Overrides Programmatically

If you’re using the SolidWorks API to process drawings and want to identify or reset overrides before exporting, the relevant interface is ITableAnnotation.

Checking if a cell is overridden:

There is no direct IsOverridden property in ITableAnnotation. The indirect approach is to compare the cell’s current text against the value you’d expect from the model’s custom property:

Dim swBom As IBomTable
Dim swTable As ITableAnnotation
Dim cellText As String

' Get the BOM table annotation
swTable = swBom.TableAnnotation

' Get cell text at row 2, column 3 (0-indexed)
cellText = swTable.Text(2, 3)
' Compare against the model's custom property for that row...

Resetting overrides via the API:

There is no ClearOverride method in the API. The workaround is to:

1. Get the current expected value from the component’s custom property via ICustomPropertyManager
2. Set the cell text to that value using ITableAnnotation.Text(row, col) = value

This does NOT clear the override flag — setting a cell value via the API also creates an override. The cell remains technically overridden (marked blue) but with the correct model-derived value. To fully clear the override flag, you need to delete the BOM and re-insert it, which is destructive for any intentional overrides on other cells.

This API limitation is a known gap in the SolidWorks API surface. The SolidWorks 3DEXPERIENCE User Forum has had unanswered questions on this for several versions. If your workflow requires programmatic override clearing without table deletion, the practical approach is to use the Document Properties option to suppress the blue indicator (Fix Option 2 above) rather than trying to clear the override state programmatically.

Related Causes of Blue Cells That Aren’t Overrides

BOM template mismatch: If you save a BOM template and load it in a drawing with a different document units setting, some cells may appear highlighted. This is a template state mismatch, not an override. See the BOM template corruption and hide1/hide2 guide for the full explanation.

Flag notes linked to BOM cells: Drawing flag notes that reference BOM cell values can create apparent double-tracking. The note takes its value from the BOM cell, and if the BOM cell is overridden, the flag note displays the overridden value. This isn’t visible as a blue cell in the note, but the values will diverge from the model if the override isn’t cleared. Our flag notes and BOM cells guide covers the parametric link workaround.

Merged cells: BOM cells that have been merged (right-click > Merge Cells) can show blue across merged cell ranges even if only one cell has an override. Reset only affects the cell you right-click, not the entire merged range. Click each cell within the merge individually to reset.

The Short Version

If your team’s batch PDF export is pulling in blue-highlighted BOMs consistently, the Document Properties approach (Fix Option 2) is the most practical — it’s a document-level setting that applies to all future exports without requiring manual override resets. Set it in your drawing template so new drawings start with the indicator disabled.