How to import data from an excel file into an existing SharePoint list

This is going to be short and precise and probably very useful for citizen developers.

My blogs have mostly been related on Power Apps and if you are someone who have started working with Power Apps recently, you might end up with using SharePoint as the data source.

Let’s take an example here. I have the candidates list which has three important columns

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email

And there is already some data in it. Now I have a list of data to import from an excel file. If you are new to SharePoint and expecting that there is an option to import an excel file, quite surprisingly there is not any.

There is an Export button but quite surprisingly no Import button. There are quite a few ways to create a list from excel but unfortunately not to an existing list from an excel file.

Then how do we import? For that, click on the Edit in grid view option. That will open the gridview in spreadsheet mode.

And finally copy and paste the data from excel. The below video demonstrates the behavior once I paste it from excel.

Well that’s it. A very easy way I suppose. But I could not somehow accept the fact that there is no import button to do the job.

Hope this helped! You may also like the below posts.

Debajit Dutta
Business Solutions MVP