I would like to display choices for one of my columns within my list that can only be found on an excel file (for data harmonization/standardization). How may I achieve this? Can I upload the excel file unto the site, and use a certain function from this? I'm only using Sharepoint online no 3rd party apps or infopath
1 Answer
This can not be done in standard-SharePoint.
You would need to write some custom code (and rather complex code, I fear) to get this working. I see two possible ways to do this:
Sync to choice field or list
You could build a sync-mechanism which syncs the data from the Excel to SharePoint (say daily or hourly or whatever). A PowerShell script on a local machine could read the Excel and update a List in SharePoint accordingly. This would be the "dirty hack"...
leverage BCS
"External Data" or "External ContentTypes" is still available in SharePoint-Online. You would need to create a WebService that provides the data (as read from the Excel-Sheet) and than connect that service to SharePoint. This way the data will be globally available across the SharePoint. It is the solution that needs the most work to be done. But from a data harmonization or standardization point-of-view this would a good solution.
