Essential SharePoint

Sharing Lists

In Microsoft Excel 2003, lists are ranges of cells that can easily be sorted, filtered, or shared. Lists are a little different from the AutoFilter feature available in earlier versions of Excel, in that lists are treated as a single entity rather than just a range of cells. This cohesion is illustrated by a blue border that Excel draws around the cells in a list.

Lists have these advantages over AutoFilter ranges:

• Lists automatically add column headers to the range.

• Lists display a handy List Toolbar when selected.

• It is easy to total the items in a list by clicking the Toggle Total button.

• XML data can be imported directly into a list.

• Excel can automatically check the data type of list entries as they are made.

• Lists can be shared and synchronized with team members through SharePoint.

That last item is the key advantage of lists—lists are really just ways to share information that fits into columns and rows.

Viewing SharePoint Lists in Excel

There are many different ways to create lists in SharePoint. In fact, since SharePoint uses lists everywhere, most tasks involve either creating lists or adding new items to them. For example, the document workspace created in the preceding sections contains several lists: Announcements, Shared Documents, Members, Tasks, Links, Contacts, and General Discussion. To view any of those lists in Excel 2003:

1. Display the list in the browser. For example, select Shared Documents from the workspace home page.

2. Click Export to Spreadsheet. SharePoint ...