Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Mar 25, 2021

Solved

Import excel into existing list (with data already in it)

Hi, Is it possible to import data from an excel sheet into a SharePoint list that already contains data in it? Basically I just want to add to the list that's already in SharePoint without overw...

Lists

microsoft lists

SharePoint Online

RobElliott
Mar 25, 2021
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

rebar74

Copper Contributor

Jun 16, 2023

I'm facing the same issue with moving data from excel to an existing list. The options presented above do not work for me in Edge or in Edge with IE enabled. I haven't tried Chrome. The list I need to update gives me an incompatible browser error when I try run Edge in IE mode. Any advice? This seems like it should be out of the box functionality. I don't understand why there just isn't an upload data from excel option. Very frustrating!

davidbump

Copper Contributor

Jun 16, 2023

Rebar, it's quirkier than I think it should be, but I've used it within the last month. I'm just using Edge (SharePoint stopped accepting connections from IE or Edge/IE-mode earlier this year), but Chrome should work as well. After switching to edit in grid mode, what I usually do is click in the add new item area to make that cell active, but if you see the "|" cursor, you then need to click anywhere else in blank space in the list, leaving the cell selected, but without the cursor actively displayed. Then paste the multi-row results from Excel (or similar) and it should work. Sometimes I have to click in and out a couple of times before it works.

Dean Zimmermann
Copper Contributor
Jul 27, 2023
This makes a lot of sense, actually. When tabs go into the background on Chrome, I see a lot of websites with client-side javascript stop executing if I switch tabs in the middle of an operation. I don't know if there is an option to stop that, but Chrome recently got some updates that lower how much it taxes memory and processing power for background tabs. Makes sense that this would be one of the remedies for that.
davidbump
Copper Contributor
Jul 27, 2023
Patience is definitely called for. Also, a coworker used this method quite recently and found that if he switched to another tab in the same browser session, the tab where the paste operation was running timed out and only saved partial results. However, deleting all rows and retrying, but not changing tabs did work. I've gone above 600 with a _lot_ of columns and it worked, though it took nearly 10 minutes to sync and commit all the rows.
Dean Zimmermann
Copper Contributor
Jul 27, 2023
davidbump, FWIW, I followed the instructions and was able to copy/paste from Excel 550 items using Chrome. Agree it's quirkier than it should be, though. Also took quite a while (like about 1 minute) to sync and save. Just have to be patient and wait it out.