SharePoint allows export of most lists and libraries to Office applications. Depending on the list/library type, the Connect & Export section of the ribbon shows enabled options to export list items to the relevant Office application.
- Navigate to the default view of any document library.
- Click the Library tab on the ribbon.
- See Figure 1 as an example of the Connect & Export section.
Table 1 details the various options available for a given list type.
Table 1. Connect and Export Options for Lists and Libraries
| Connect to Office |
Lists and Libraries |
Creates a favorite link in your My Site, under My Links; these
links appear in the backstage area of Office applications when opening
and saving to SharePoint. Requires My Site and User Profile Service
working. |
| Connect to Outlook |
Document Libraries, Tasks, Contacts, Calendars, Discussion Boards, and External Content Lists |
When exporting lists of the available type to Outlook, the list
becomes a particular type of folder in Outlook (for example, a Calendar
list becomes a Calendar folder in Outlook). Users may read and edit the
list items from Outlook. |
| Export to Excel |
Lists and Libraries |
Exports all metadata of a list or library to columns and row data in an Excel sheet. |
| Open with Project |
Tasks |
Opens the tasks from the task list in Microsoft Project as a new series of project tasks. |
| Open with Access |
Lists and Libraries |
Opens Microsoft Access and shows the list or library metadata in an
Access table. Editing the data in Access updates the list data in real
time. |
The great thing about interacting with
SharePoint lists and libraries from Office applications is that most of
the export capabilities work with external lists . For example, you can use Excel to open and edit a list in SharePoint that connects to a table in SQL Server via BCS.
Thus far, you have seen common and general
Office application integration with SharePoint, both from the backstage
area of Office and as export from SharePoint 2010.
1. Microsoft Word
In addition to the aforementioned integration
features, Microsoft Word works with SharePoint to allow users to write
blog posts, compare document versions, and add Quick Parts. The
following sections discuss these features.
Writing Blog Posts
Microsoft Word includes
a template to author blog posts. Microsoft Word works with many
blogging engines, not just SharePoint.
- Open Microsoft Word.
- Click the File tab and then the left tab item, named New.
- Search for the Blog Post template.
- Click the Create button (Figure 2).
If you have not registered a blogging service
(such as SharePoint), Word will give you the option to do so, with a
dialog, as shown in Figure 3.
Note You
may register new blogging service accounts at any time by clicking the
Manage Accounts icon in the Blog section of the ribbon. Then click the
New button.
- Click the Register Now button.
- Change the blog provider to SharePoint Blog and then click the Next button.
- Enter the URL of the blog site in your SharePoint site collection.
- You may click the Picture Options button to configure where Word
saves images; by default, SharePoint stores the pictures in the Photos
library of the blog site.
- Click the OK button.
- After editing the blog post in Word, click the Publish icon on the ribbon to publish the document to the SharePoint blog.
You may wish to publish a regular Word document
to SharePoint without creating a new blog post document and using
copy-and-paste.
- From an open Word document, click the File tab.
- Click the Share tab in the left navigation.
- Click the Post to Blog Post link.
Note You
may launch Word with a fresh instance of a blog template from within a
SharePoint blog site by clicking the Launch Blogging App link from the
Blog tools callout on the left of the blog site pages.
