Office 365, Sharepoint and problem with BCS

[Uroš Mrak]

Hi there. we've been searching around for this "problem", asking uncle Google, but didn't really found any solutions (if there is any?). In our company we are using Sharepoint 2016 on-premises and Office 365 ProPlus. If we open a Word document (with Word dektop app) which has Sharepoint fields with external data, we get the well known error "In order to pick external items you must have Microsoft Business Connectivity services client components installed".

How to "install" BCS in Office 365? Is there any solution at all? 

Thank you in advance.

Uros

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hey @Uroš Mrak,

You can do BCS in SharePoint Online/Office 365. However the issue you are having is a bit different. You are using SharePoint On-prem with Office 365 pro plus deployments.

The problem you are going to have is googling this you are going to find ways to turn on BCS on sharepoint online, but if your data is not there, its not much help.

I think you ultimate solution would be a hybrid BCS deployment, as explained here -https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/hybrid/deploy-a-business-connectivity-services-hybrid-so...

This will mean surfacing data into SharePoint Online, but that would then make that data available to your cloud office deployments. 

Adam