Forum Discussion
Import excel into existing list (with data already in it)
RRMX01 if you go to Edit in grid view on your list you can paste in data from an excel spreadsheet.
Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User
I figured it out!! I was struggling with this and really needed to make it work.
It depends on how you click on the cell. If you have the curser flashing in the cell to enter text then it will just paste whatever you copy from Excel as text. However, if you want to copy several rows or items from Excel, you need to click on the cell in grid mode. To do that, if you have the curser flashing, click on an area outside the list.
Step by step:
1. Click on "Add new item"
2. Select the cell you want the rows to go to, or the cell in column A to enter all columns
3. The cell will select and your curser will flash in the first column
4. Click below that row and under the end of the list
5. Your selection will become still the same cell but without the flashing cursor
6. Paste
7. If you had several rows whether just one column or several it will paste all the rows as new rows into your list.
Tested and verified. Works like a charm. See a few screenshots below.
Text entry: (not what you want)
which leads to the following:
No cursor selection should look like so:
And leads to the following:
Notice the "wrong" pasted option at the top and the correct pasting underneath that.
Browser: Chrome
View used: SharePoint Modern View
OS: MacOS 14
When you import from MS Access, can you import to an existing SP list? I have imported from MS Access to create a new SP list but I want to import into an existing SP list so that I can define the columns before importing.
B-Jayne Leuterman Yes, that's the beauty of using Access. Create a blank Access database. From the External Data menu, choose New Data Source - Online -> SharePoint list. Paste the URL of the base of your SP site and select "Link to the data source". Select one or more lists. If any of your lists contain Person column types, Access may bring in an additional table called UserInfo that contains user profile data of what are called "site users". These are the users that have accessed your SP site at some point in time.
If your SP list contains lookup columns, Access should also bring in the source lists of those lookup columns. For example, if your SP site has a list called Products and another list called Warehouses, and Products has a lookup column "Warehouse" that points to the Warehouses list, then linking to the Products list from Access should also bring in a link to the Warehouses list into Access.
You can copy and paste data into these lists, similar to what people in this forum are describing about the SP web-based list interface. You can also write SQL-like queries in Access that insert data into the SP list from another Access table or other data source.
Note that these SP lists appear in Access like tables, but are actually directly connected to the SP list. Therefore, changes/insertions you make in Access will immediately update the SP list online.
- Thank you ever so much!!!!! You’ve made my day 🙂
BenHoffmann Have you tried with Power Automate? it should also be possible to do a for each loop
- I've heard that it can be done in Power Automate. It may just depend whether you're more comfortable using PA's GUI to construct the transfer of data, or writing SQL in Access. I prefer the latter.
BenHoffmann yes it can be done with Power Automate, but depeding on the number of Excfel rows to import it might be quite slow.
Rob
Los Gallardos
Microsoft Power Automate Community Super User
yyarin104 I'm new in Power Automate, would you be able to send some quick instructions on how to do this?? I have hundreds of thousands of records from Excel to import to a Sharepoint list. Thanks!
iamhuman2414 can I do the same with an Access database that didn't import everything over? I want to get the missing items without losing or messing with what's already there. Thanks in advance.
