Exporting to Excel 2003 for Ease of Management

We have now looked at two common tasksexporting to Excel 2003 for printing and exporting to Excel 2003 for graphing. A third common task is simply exporting to Excel 2003 for better data management. As you saw in the previous examples, the Print with Excel and Chart with Excel features start off with a series of steps that actually creates a new Excel 2003 spreadsheet and exports the list content.

Once the data is in Excel, it can be formatted for printing, for charting, or for creating a PivotTable (although we don't have room to discuss PivotTables in depth). The spreadsheet can also be used to enter additional data to the list! Some users prefer to use Excel when working with lists as a mean of entering larger amounts of data.

To create a spreadsheet in Excel 2003 that is linked to SharePoint (and if data is added or changed in the spreadsheet, it can be pushed to the SharePoint list), follow these steps:

1.	From within the list, click Export and Link to Excel from within the Datasheet task pane.
2.	If the Opening Query window appears, click Open, which indicates you trust the source of the file. If you are then prompted with a pop-up window stating "This list is linked to a SharePoint library…," click OK. A new spreadsheet opens, with the range of data surrounded by a blue border.
3.	Add a new line of data by clicking the last line within the blue border (this won't work if you have exported a library). Enter appropriate text, date, or numerical information or select data from the drop-down menus.
4.	When you have entered the information, click Data in the menu bar and then select List. From the submenu shown in Figure 14.3, select Synchronize List, and the data will synchronize with SharePoint. Figure 14.3. List submenu in Excel 2003.
5.	Return to the SharePoint list. Refresh the data by pressing F5 to verify the data did in fact synchronize.

Figure 14.3 shows a number of other commands provided when the contents of a list are exported to Excel 2003. The Synchronize List command was used in the previous section. Here are some other commonly used commands:

• Total Row Adds a Total row to the list along the bottom line.

• Convert to Range This operation prevents you from updating the SharePoint list with any changes.

• Publish List This command allows you to publish the list to another location. You will need the rights to create a list on this site. Although this is a good way to publish the data to a new location, the new list won't be connected to the old list or the spreadsheet, so it is like printing the data to a web page.

• Unlink List Breaks the connection with the SharePoint list so that synchronization is not possible.