How Business Central Integrates with Microsoft Excel (2025)
Business Central's Excel integration: exporting list page data, opening or editing it in Excel (web or Windows app), building pivot tables and charts on data that can be refreshed, and publishing bulk edits back through the Excel add-in pane. Demoed in a 3-minute walkthrough using customer ledger entries and the customer list.
- Overview of Excel integration capabilities
- Opening and accessing data in Excel
- Creating pivot tables and charts for analysis
- Updating records in Excel and the addin pane
- Publishing changes back to Business Central
Overview
The video shows how Business Central works with Excel for analysis and for editing data. On list pages, a user can open data in Excel to view it or edit it in Excel to change it. Both Excel for the web and the Excel app for Windows are supported.
The demo builds a pivot table of quarterly sales by customer and adds a pivot chart from Excel’s Insert tab. These reports stay connected to Business Central and can be refreshed. It then edits several records in Excel and publishes the changes back, which it contrasts with updating each customer card one by one. The Excel add-in pane provides the refresh, filter and publish controls.
Key points
- List pages offer both an open in Excel option (viewing) and an edit in Excel option (making changes).
- Both Excel for the web and the Excel app for Windows are supported.
- Pivot tables and pivot charts are built from the Insert tab in Excel, for example quarterly sales by customer.
- Reports and charts created in Excel keep a data connection to Business Central and can be refreshed.
- In edit mode, the Excel add-in pane has controls to refresh, filter and publish data.
- Editing many records in Excel and publishing them back replaces updating each customer card individually.
- Objects mentioned: Customer Ledger Entries table, Customer List page, Customer Card page.
Features
Every feature below: status not stated, demoed.
| Feature | At |
|---|---|
| Export data to Excel | 0:00 |
| Open or Edit in Excel option | 0:31 |
| Pivot table creation | 0:57 |
| Pivot chart visualization | 1:18 |
| Data connection refresh | 1:30 |
| Bulk update in Excel | 1:41 |
| Excel addin pane | 2:04 |
AL objects mentioned
As heard in the captions. A name that matches one object page by exact type and name links to it; the others stay as named.
- table “Customer Ledger Entries” at 0:16
- page 22 “Customer List” at 1:41
- page 21 “Customer Card” at 2:26
Not found in BC28-30: table “Customer Ledger Entries”.
Quotes
- 0:00 “Business Central makes analyzing and working with your financial data simple with integration to Microsoft Excel. You can easily export data from a list”
- 0:16 “You can also edit your data in Excel and then publish it back to Business Central”
- 0:31 “On list pages, you have the option to either open or edit in Excel”
- 1:30 “Analyzing the data in Excel enables powerful reporting abilities, all of which can be refreshed through the data connection”
- 1:53 “This could take a while if you had to update the field one by one on each customer card. With edit in Excel, we”
- 2:04 “When Excel opens, the Excel addin pane displays. Here we can refresh, filter, and publish our data”