Connect Azure Boards to an Office client

TFS 2018

To support your work tracking efforts, use Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project. You can either work in online mode, where you're connected to Azure DevOps. Or, work in offline mode, where you access the local computer and document.

Supported Office clients and Azure DevOps versions

The following table indicates the Office clients supported for each Azure DevOps version. MacOS isn't supported. Even if you installed Visual Studio for Mac, connection to Azure DevOps from Excel or any other Office client isn't supported.

Prerequisites

Connection from an Office client to an Azure Boards project requires the following software and permissions.

• To connect Excel to Azure Boards, you must install Office Excel 2010 or later version, including Microsoft 365.

• To connect Project to Azure Boards, you must install Office Project 2010 or later version, including Microsoft 365.

• To connect PowerPoint to Azure Boards, you must install Office PowerPoint 2010 or later version installed.

• Installed Visual Studio 2013 or later version or Team Foundation Server Standalone Office Integration (free)

• The only way to get the Team Foundation plug-in is by installing one of the latest editions of Visual Studio or the TFS Standalone Office Integration plug-in. The plug-in supports connection to TFS from Excel, Project, and the PowerPoint-based storyboarding tool.

• To connect to an Azure Boards project, you need to be a member of the project. If you don't have an Azure Boards project yet, you can create one.

• Office Excel 2010 or later version, including Microsoft Office Excel 365

• Office Project 2010 or later version, including Office Project 365

• Visual Studio 2013 or later version or Team Foundation Server Standalone Office Integration (free)

• Permissions to connect to the project.

For information about compatibility requirements, see Compatibility with Azure DevOps.

Publish and refresh work items

When you add or update work items from Excel, local copies of your work items are created. To keep data in sync, it's important to refresh your local file when you open it and publish and refresh frequently during a long online session.

At first, the data in the local document matches the data in the database. But you or other team members can change the data about work items and cause the two to differ. To view the most recent changes from the database, refresh the document. The refresh downloads the latest values in the data store to your local document. To write changes from the document to the database, publish the changes. Publishing uploads the changes you made to the work item tracking data store.

To keep work items in sync from your local data store and Azure Boards, publish and refresh often.

Azure DevOps and Excel

To work in Excel, see Bulk add work items with Excel.

Connect an Azure DevOps project to Excel

To add or modify work items by using Excel, connect your worksheet to a project. Establish this connection to bind the document to the Azure DevOps project to exchange information.

You can start work from the web portal, Excel, or Visual Studio/Team Explorer. Your worksheet is associated with either a list of work items or a work item query.

For more information, see Bulk add work items with Excel.

If you move your Azure DevOps project to a different project collection in the same instance of Azure DevOps, your documents automatically reconnect. But, if the project moves to a different instance of Azure DevOps, you must manually reconnect your documents to the new server.

Work offline and reconnect to Azure Boards

One advantage of working in Excel is that you can work offline and add or modify work items. The following procedures show you how to disconnect an Excel work item list from Azure Boards. You can then reconnect later to synchronize the document with the work item database.

Disconnect a document file from the network

To disconnect an Excel document file from the network:

1. Open the document that you want to change while you're offline.

2. Refresh the work item list to retrieve the latest information from the work item database. In Excel, on the Team ribbon, in the Work Items group, choose Refresh.

3. Add to the work item list the columns for all fields that you want to modify. You can't add columns when the work item list is disconnected from the server.

4. Disconnect your computer from the network, or save the work item list file and copy it to another computer.

   An error message might appear that tells you the Office program couldn't establish a connection with an Azure DevOps Server.

5. Modify or update the work item list as needed.

   You can't create most types of links between work items when the work item document is disconnected from the system. The exceptions are parent-child links in an Excel tree list.

Reconnect a file to Azure Boards

To reconnect an Excel document file:

1. Reconnect your computer to the network, or copy the file to a computer that is connected to Azure Boards.

2. If you changed the document offline, in Excel, on the Team ribbon, in the Work Items group, choose Publish.

3. If you didn't change the document offline, in Excel, on the Team ribbon, in the Work Items group, choose Refresh.

4. Resolve any data validation errors or conflicts that occur.

Marketplace extensions

The following Marketplace extensions support integration between Azure DevOps and Office products.

• Azure DevOps Open in Excel: Opens a selected query in Excel.
• Office 365 Integration: Pushes notifications of configurable Azure DevOps events to an Office 365 Group.

Related articles

• Bulk modify work items (web portal)
• Bulk import or update work items using CSV files
• FAQs: Work in Excel connected to Azure Boards
• Create your backlog