With pages that display a list of records in rows and columns, like a list of customers, sale orders, or invoices, you can export the list to Microsoft Excel, and view it there. Depending on the page, you have two options for viewing in Excel. You can either select the Open in Excel action or the Edit in Excel action on the page. This article explains the two actions.

Microsoft documentation: Viewing and Editing in Excel From Business Central (contains video) - Business Central | Microsoft Learn

Open in Excel

With the Open in Excel action, you can make changes to the records in Excel, but you can't publish the changes back to Business Central. You can only save the changes to Excel file, without affecting data in Business Central.

Open

With this action, Excel respects any filters on the page that limit the records shown. The Excel workbook will contain the same rows and columns that appear on the page in Business Central.

Edit in Excel

The Edit in Excel action is available on most lists, but not all. With the Edit in Excel action, you make changes to records in Excel and then publish the changes back to Business Central. When Excel opens, you'll see the Excel Add-in pane on the right.

First-time sign-in

In some cases, your administrator may have set up the add-in to install automatically for you. In this case, you just have to sign in to Business Central in Excel Add-in pane with your user name and password. Otherwise, the New Office Add-in pane opens. To install the add-in, choose Trust this add-in, which will install the add-in directly from the Office Store.

You can switch the company that you're working with. To switch company, select the Options icon in the Excel Add-in pane, then select the company from the Company field.

Open

If you make changes to the add-in, you must reload it to update the connection. To reload, use the menu in the top-right corner of the add-in. If you can't load the add-in, talk to your administrator.

There are multiple actions in the Add-in pane:

• New = if you want to create a new record for the selected data source (in our case on the Item Card)

• Refresh = if you want to get the latest data from Business Central

• Publish = if you want to transfer your changes to Business Central, you need to Publish them

• Filter = records can be filtered in Excel. After selecting the filter, however, it is necessary to Update the record