Connect Azure Boards to Excel (legacy)

Azure DevOps Services | Azure DevOps Server | Azure DevOps Server 2022

To support legacy work tracking workflows, you can use Microsoft Excel to add or update work items. You can either work in online mode (connected to Azure Boards or Azure DevOps Server) or in offline mode (against a local copy of the 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

For information about compatibility requirements, see Azure DevOps client compatibility.

Limitations and known issues

The Azure DevOps Office integration add-in predates modern Microsoft 365 authentication and is no longer actively maintained. Expect the following limitations:

• Modern authentication: Sign-in might fail in environments that require Conditional Access, multifactor authentication (MFA), or device compliance policies. If interactive sign-in fails, try signing into your Office client with the same account used for Azure DevOps before opening the worksheet.
• Personal access tokens (PATs): Some scenarios prompt for a PAT instead of interactive sign-in. PATs are long-lived credentials and aren't recommended—use Microsoft Entra tokens where supported. If you must use a PAT, see Use personal access tokens.
• Microsoft 365 (web) and macOS: The add-in works only with the desktop versions of Office on Windows. Excel for the web and Office for Mac aren't supported.
• Hosted agents and automation: The add-in is interactive only and isn't supported for unattended or pipeline-based scenarios. Use the Azure DevOps REST API instead.
• Large datasets: Publishing or refreshing thousands of work items in a single worksheet can time out. Split work across multiple worksheets or use CSV import/export.

For supported alternatives, see Bulk modify work items in the web portal and Bulk import or update work items using CSV files.

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, 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

The following diagram shows how Team Explorer and Excel exchange work item data with Azure DevOps. Excel publishes your edits to Azure DevOps and refreshes its local copy with server-side updates.

For the full Excel workflow, 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.

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, select 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, select Publish.

3. If you didn't change the document offline, in Excel, on the Team ribbon, in the Work Items group, select 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 or set of work items in Excel from the web portal. Maintained by Microsoft DevLabs and updated as recently as 2025. Requires Microsoft Excel and the Azure DevOps Office Integration client.
• Office 365 Integration: Sends notifications of Azure DevOps events (such as build completion, code pushes, and work item changes) to a Microsoft 365 group inbox through service hooks. Pre-installed with Azure DevOps Services.

Related content

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