Export Excel Table to SharePoint List

A SharePoint Online tutorial by Peter Kalmström

Excel tables can be exported to SharePoint, and in the demo below Peter Kalmström, CEO and Systems Designer of kalmstrom.com Business Solutions, shows how to do it.

The major benefit of this method is that it is simple and quick. However, when Excel creates the list in SharePoint it makes a number of "mistakes". In the two following articles, we describe the problems and how to fix most of them.

When you have exported the Excel data to SharePoint it can only be updated in SharePoint. Changes in SharePoint can be pulled down to Excel by using the Excel Refresh button, but not vice versa. You should also be aware that you cannot change the order of columns or exclude columns from the export. The table will be exported just as it is.

To get more control and synchronization both ways, use the Access method to import Excel data to SharePoint.

Excel icon

These are the steps to export Excel data to a SharePoint
list via the export to SharePoint command in Excel:

Format the data as a table. Note that this is only possible if there are no blank rows or columns among the data.
Click on the Export button under the Table Design tab and select 'Export Table to SharePoint List'.
Enter the URL to the SharePoint site where you want to import the Excel table.
Check the box for read-only connection.
Enter a name for the new SharePoint list.
Click Next and then Finish.

Now a new SharePoint list will be created on the site you gave the URL to, and the data from the Excel table will be distributed into it.

When the process is finished you will get a link to the new list. You can also open the list by clicking on the Open in Browser button in Excel.

The automatically created list is not optimal, and in the next demo, Peter describes the problems.