Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Import excel data to SharePoint list

This is one of the nice and best SharePoint feature that we have implemented. By default SharePoint will provide us an option to edit in spreadsheet or download list items in spread sheet. But, it doesn't have the option to import the excel data to SharePoint list. When we have data in excel format and want to import that data to a sharepoint list, then how to do. That is why we took it as a challenge and implemented this.

And second reason is, this feature has a nice and wonderful feature of column mapping. You can manually choose column to column mapping, so that the column names not needed to be exactly same. This is one of the best option in this feature.

This feature works for both SharePoint and WSS.

The installation is simple and it is using the codeplex sharepoint installer package to install the feature. As it is developed as a SharePoint feature, you can get this feature associated with each list under the actions tab once you activated it. You can call this feature by going to specific list, under actions menu item just click on the feature name. Then it will take to a page which has a nice user interface to upload an excel, then choose specific sheet and then map the fields as you want.

You can take a look at it here on CodePlex.

http://spreadsheet2splist.codeplex.com/

I think, this will help you out to import data from excel to SharePoint list problem. Isn’t it?

5 comments:

  1. Have u looked into

    Site Action > Create > under Custom Lists > Import Spreadsheet ?


    thanks
    Sandeep

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think, if someone learn something in SharePoint, they should have seen all options around and research on them. So, I have 3 years of experience in SharePoint development, I saw and known almost all features available in SharePoint. So, what you asked me in your comment, I knew it well and used so many scenarios. But the one we developed is not at all works like that.

    Don't you read my complete post? I have mentioned
    "This feature has a nice and wonderful feature of column mapping. You can manually choose column to column mapping, so that the column names not needed to be exactly same. This is one of the best option in this feature.
    This feature works for both SharePoint and WSS."
    So, you can select the column mapping, that won't be possible with the built-in feature. I think, you got what I am saying. Have a nice day.

    In WSS, The path, you have given is right and in SharePoint, the location should be Site Actions > View All Site Content > Create > Under custom lists section > Import spread sheet.
    Thanks any way for your comment.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A more general implementation to pull data from external sources (including Excel) right into a custom SharePoint list (with updates) you can find here:

    http://www.layer2.de/en/products/Pages/SharePoint-Business-Data-List-Connector.aspx

    It's configured directly in the list settings, very easy. Only changed data is updated, that means you can setup list workflows to start business actions, if external data changes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for this feature i was looking for it for time..
    i have a sugestion for improvement.
    since poeple add regulary the same colums ordre from a xls file to the listi it would be nice to have a default mapping colums that is the same as he ordre of colums.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Praveen,

    I recently found your project in Codeplex for SharePoint 2010 solution, but too bad, both and 2007 and 2010 downloads have been removed.

    May I know whether you can send the web part to me instead?

    Thanks.

    Regards,
    Jenson

    ReplyDelete