Discover how to import Excel records into an Outlook Calendar

Image: IB Photography/Adobe Stock It’s not unusual to get an Excel sheet with a list of consultations or tasks. But if you utilize Outlook to keep up with your responsibilities, a list in Excel isn’t all that valuable. To make the data better, you might by hand get in each record as a new consultation into Outlook, or you can import the Excel data straight into Outlook as consultations. For performance’s sake, I ‘d pick the latter!

SEE: The Total Microsoft Workplace Master Class Package (TechRepublic Academy)

In this tutorial, I’ll reveal you how to produce Outlook consultations from a few Excel records. By saving the source information in the comma-delimited format and after that mapping that information to Outlook fields, you can import most information into the suitable Outlook item with little effort. If you need to move data from Excel to Outlook frequently, you need to consider conserving time by automating the procedure.

For this tutorial, I’m utilizing Microsoft 365 Desktop on a Windows 10 64-bit system. You can work with your own Excel data or download the easy demonstration.xlsx file. Please note that Outlook.com does not support this strategy.

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Usage cases for importing Excel information to Outlook

Numerous users save contact and consultation information in an Excel sheet. There are a couple of reasons that your data might start in Excel:

• The individual tracking the information might not understand how to utilize or feel comfortable using Outlook.
• Excel uses functions that can determine end dates, times and other values that users may desire.
• A company’s hierarchy of business processes may require the information to live in Excel first.
• Users may not have access to Outlook beyond basic work parameters

With today’s most current sharing and collaborating features, in addition to the growing focus on remote labor forces, this last Excel data silo is less of a problem than it as soon as was. Nevertheless, in all of these cases, users who desire or require to gain access to this data in Outlook will need to find out a way to import it from Excel. Thankfully, it’s extremely simple to move data to Outlook. We’ll cover how to do this throughout the rest of this tutorial guide.

Preparing the Excel data

In older versions of Outlook, you can import directly from an Excel workbook file, however that’s no longer the case in the most recent versions. Prior to you can import Excel information into Outlook utilizing Microsoft 365, you need to save that information to comma-separated (delimited) format, or.csv.

SEE: How to quickly import a.txt or.csv file into Microsoft Excel (TechRepublic)

To show this procedure, we’ll use the easy data set shown in Figure A. You’ll see that there’s meaningful text to identify the consultation, the consultation date and time worths. The dates and times can be strings or Date/Time values due to the fact that Outlook is really flexible.

Figure A

Ensure the data is ready for Outlook prior to trying to import. The demonstration.xlsx file contains just one sheet since that’s all the.csv feature supports. Excel won’t permit you to conserve a multiple-sheet workbook to.csv format. If you try, Excel will display a mistake

message. The presentation sheet utilizes a Table object to organize the information, however you might also use a normal information variety. Even though the records are sorted by date, Outlook does not need an arranged data set for this method to work.

Now, let’s save this sheet to.csv format as follows:

1. Click the File tab and pick Save As in the left pane.

2. Modification the file name, if essential, but Excel won’t write over your Excel workbook file; it will instead develop a new.csv file.

3. From the File Type dropdown, choose the CSV (Comma delimited) (*. csv) option (Figure B). The import job will stop working if the.csv file is open. Use the UTF-8 variation if you’re importing unique characters.

Figure B

Choose the.csv alternative. 4. Click Save. You can neglect the possible data loss mistake if shown. Make certain to keep in mind the place of the file if there’s any possibility you will not remember where it

is. 5. Close the.csv file you just created. Outlook will not import the information if the.csv source file is open.

With the Excel information in a.csv file, you can proceed to importing that data into Outlook.

Importing the information into an Outlook calendar

Now it’s time to open Outlook and prepare to import the records in the.csv file. You will be importing them into an Outlook calendar using a wizard. During this process, you will map the Excel values to Outlook consultation fields.

By map, I indicate to connect one Excel field to one Outlook field. You’re telling Outlook where to store the Excel worths within Outlook. An Outlook field resembles an Excel cell, however it’s much more involved. It has a name, a data type and other recognizing features. Outlook even supports user-defined fields.

To introduce the wizard, open Outlook if needed and after that click the File tab, choose Open & Export in the left pane and after that click Import/Export from the Open area shown in Figure C.

Figure C

Access the wizard. Now, run the wizard as follows: 1. In the wizard’s very first pane, pick Import From Another Program Or File( if necessary

)and click Next. 2. Choose Comma Separated Values and click Next.

3. Click the Browse button and overcome the folder structure to select the.csv submit you created previously. Figure D reveals the demonstration file.

Figure D

Find the.csv file you developed in the last area. 4. Click OK after choosing that file, and the wizard go back to the same pane, which also lets you identify how Outlook handle duplicates in the.csv file. There won’t be any in our example, however when applying this to your own work, you’ll want to select properly. In the meantime, accept the default option, Enable Duplicates To Be Developed, and click Next.

5. Select calendar (Figure E) and click Next. If you have more than one calendar, make sure to choose the best one.

Figure E

Recognize the calendar. 6. This next step is a bit buggy, so pay extra attention. The wizard will show the file to import. It’s not obvious, but the square to the left of the file name is a checkbox. You need to click it to display the checkmark. If you do not see this check (Figure F), the wizard won’t go any even more. When you click it correctly, the wizard might open the mapping dialog automatically. If that takes place, you do not require to click Map Customized Fields as explained in the next step.

Figure F

Ensure to examine the checkbox to the left of the file name. 7. Click where it says Map Custom-made Fields. This step might not be required, depending upon the outcome you had during action six.

8. At this point, you need to match the Excel values to an Outlook appointment field. We pointed out earlier that this procedure is called mapping. The left pane lists the Excel fields, while the right pane notes the calendar fields. As you can see in Figure G, Outlook maps three of the fields properly for you: Start Date, Start Time and End Time. That’s since the Excel field names are the same as the Outlook field names.

Figure G

Map the Excel fields to the calendar fields. 9. There’s no comparable to the Job field, so you need to map this field manually. To map the Task field, simply drag it from the left pane to the ideal pane(Figure H)and map it to the Outlook Topic field. You might need to repeat this step for any other fields that did not map instantly.

Figure H

You must map the Job field by hand. 10. When you’ve mapped all the fields, click OK and then Finish to set off the import. Figure I reveals the recently created visits.

Figure I

Outlook imports the Excel data to display newly produced visits. There are two things worth keeping in mind at this point. Initially, did you observe the phantom character in Task in the mapping dialog? If you see something like this, it will almost always be in the first field. It’s a formatting code that Excel stopped working to get rid of while transforming to.csv. You can ignore it. If you do have trouble importing after mapping, attempt opening the.csv file and re-entering the field names.

Second, if you import the exact same Excel records, Outlook will duplicate the appointment. If you change the duplication option displayed in action four to Do Not Import Duplicate Products, it will not do this.

SEE: Microsoft Excel from Newbie to Advanced: Refresher Course (TechRepublic Academy)

Can you link an Outlook calendar to Excel?

Regrettably, there’s no native process for developing a dynamic link in between Excel and Outlook. As you upgrade the Excel file, you must repeat the procedure outlined in this article. Nevertheless, if this happens frequently enough, you can use Microsoft Power Automate to create a flow that will automate the process.

To read more about Power Automate, you can check out the following short articles:

Big picture

This article has a specific objective: To import Excel information into an Outlook consultation. Using.csv information and Outlook’s wizard, you can import lots of various information into various Outlook products. For a list of the most commonly utilized Outlook appointment field names, have a look at the table listed below. This will be especially useful for power users of Microsoft Office products.

This table is not detailed by any means, however it is a handy beginning point for users who wish to move data from Excel to Outlook. Outlook shops values with a Yes/No data type as -1 and 0, respectively.

The majority of commonly used Outlook appointment field names

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