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I'm trying to import data from excel into an existing list. I can paste one line at a time by opening the excel doc and the sharepoint list in datasheet view, but that's not very efficient.

Any sugestions?

Alternately, is there a way to add fields to a newly imported list that behave like task list items?

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5 Answers 5

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Following on James Love's answer:

For Sharepoint 2003, you can copy/paste, but you must be careful about how you do it. (not sure how this may apply to more current versions)

After copying the data in your excel spreadsheet, go to your Sharepoint list and single-click on your left-most editable cell in the 'new row' at the bottom (so that you're selecting the cell, not editing it). Hit ctrl-v and you should be good.

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For Sharepoint 2007 there is a nice tool on codeplex: http://spreadsheet2splist.codeplex.com/

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  • Does it work in 2010?
    – user2339
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 14:20
  • This answer is no longer valid. Broken links and CodePlex deprecation.
    – Chiramisu
    Commented Aug 29, 2017 at 1:29
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If you can't use third party tools- if you line up the columns in the excel spreedsheet to that of your view in datasheet view, you can select all the rows you want and paste them directly into the datasheet view.

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  • I do this all the time, you just have to make sure the column formats and the data being input match and it's also helpful to make every column optional.
    – Eric Alexander
    Commented Feb 4, 2011 at 20:44
  • Do you find if you paste into a lookup column the browser sorta hangs for an age? Wondering if it's just my client's environment...
    – James Love
    Commented Feb 4, 2011 at 20:51
  • It was not letting me paste more than one row at a time
    – user2339
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 14:18
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I don't yet have the rep required to comment on @WimHill, so here goes as an answer:

Yes there is a version of Praveen Battula / Technovert's tool that works with SharePoint 2010, 2013 and Online. It is called SPImporter and is available at https://spimporter.codeplex.com/.

I tried it out just now and it worked fine to import a few hundred rows from an Excel 2007 spreadsheet into an Announcements list in SP2013 Server.

Note however that Praveen Battula / Technovert haven't published the source code yet, which is a requirement for projects hosted on CodePlex, so you will have to decide if it is safe to use the download setup binary as is.

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It's not clear what version of SharePoint this is for, but I have a very in depth answer here for . Basically, you have to do the following:

  1. Create a Datasheet View with the columns you want to load (and filter/sort by rows if updating existing data; BE CAREFUL!)
  2. Create corresponding Excel sheet (column names don't matter, only order).
  3. Format data in Excel, and load writable data into the view you prepared in Step 1. The trickiest column types to load are Person or Group and Lookup.
  4. Copy/Paste the relevant formatted rows from Excel to the Datasheet View.

I have loaded over 5,000 records before, though this did take a few minutes to fully populate about a dozen fields, so you may have to exercise a bit of patience. :)

As for the CodePlex answers provided by others, CodePlex will be shutdown at the end of this year, but these are not necessary anyway. My solution works well. Please view my full answer on my other question for much more detail.

Import/Copy/Paste Data from Excel into Existing SharePoint List

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