Add or modify Azure Boards work items in bulk with Microsoft Excel

Article
10/26/2021

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When you need to add or modify many work items, using Microsoft Excel can save you time. Excel supports adding work items, updating existing work items, adding links and attachments to multiple work items, and more. You can also use native Excel features to support other actions, such as summing a column, copy-and-paste rows, fill down data into cells, and more.

In this article you'll learn how to complete the following tasks:

Choose the type of list or query to support your task
Use select Excel features when connected to Azure Boards
Import or update work items, either a flat list or hierarchy tree list
Publish and refresh your work items
Convert a flat-list to a tree-list, change your list type or query
Add work items to your worksheet
Add and remove work item fields from your worksheet
Select user accounts for identity or person-named fields
Link work items, find work items to link to, edit links, and more
Add attachments to one or more work items
Open a work item from Excel to add additional information (opens in web portal)
Edit Area and Iteration Paths (opens in web portal)

For information about connecting to Excel, see Connect Azure Boards to an Office client. For answers to specific questions about the integration of Excel and Azure DevOps, see FAQs: Work in Excel connected to Azure Boards .

Prerequisites

Note

macOS isn't supported. Even if you've installed Visual Studio for Mac, connection to Azure DevOps from Excel isn't supported.

Installed Microsoft Excel 2010 or later version, including Microsoft Office Excel 365
Installed Azure DevOps Office Integration 2019 (free).

Note

The only way to get the plug-in is by installing one of the latest editions of Visual Studio or the Azure DevOps Standalone Office Integration installer. The Azure DevOps Office Integration 2019 plug-in supports connection to Azure Boards and Azure DevOps 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.
To view or modify work items, you must have these permissions set to Allow: View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node. By default, the Contributors group has this permission set. To learn more, see Set permissions and access for work tracking.
To add or modify work items, you must be granted Stakeholder access or higher. For details, see Stakeholder access quick reference.
To use the Select User feature, install Visual Studio (at least VS 2015.1 or later version or Team Foundation Server Office Integration 2015 Update 2 or later version. You can download the free version of Visual Studio Community. Get this feature to avoid data validation errors by misspelling user names and when you must assign user names from a large group of user accounts.

To learn more about compatibility requirements, see Compatibility with Azure DevOps Server.

Choose list and query type

When you work in Excel connected to Azure Boards, you're always working with a query type and a list type. Queries correspond to the queries you create using the Query Editor.

Query types:
- None: Indicates it's an input list.
- Query title: Indicates the list of work items is tied to the specified query.
List types:
- Flat list: Simple list of work items that shows a single Title column. No link management is supported.
- Tree list: Hierarchical list of work items that support creating and updating tree topology links, such as Parent-Child links, between work items. These lists include two or more Title columns.

You can add, modify, publish, and refresh work items using any query type and list type.

Query types

Azure Boards supports three query types. The icon next to each query indicates the query type. The first two query types, Flat list of work items and Work items and direct links are imported as flat list queries.

Query type icon list

Only the Tree of work items queries import as a tree list. Direct links queries are imported as a flat list into Excel as modifying multiple types of links aren't a supported feature in Excel.

Tree lists

You can bulk add a nested list of work items, such as a work breakdown structure or a hierarchical set of user stories and customer experiences. For example, you can add a nested list of tasks, subtasks, and bugs, as shown in the following illustration, or linked tasks to product backlog items.

Here's how a three-level nested tree of items appears in Excel.

Tree list of work items, conceptual image

Parent-child links or other tree topology link types support creating a hierarchical backlog structure. The work item types that participate in the hierarchy differ with different processes and are shown in the following images.

The following image shows the Agile process backlog work item hierarchy. User Stories and Tasks are used to track work, Bugs track code defects, and Epics and Features are used to group work under larger scenarios.

Conceptual image, Agile work item type

Each team can configure how they manage Bugs—at the same level as User Stories or Tasks—by configuring the Working with bugs setting. To learn more about using these work item types, see Agile process.

To import a hierarchical list, see Add or import a hierarchical list of work items later in this article.

My queries versus shared queries

You can open in Excel any query you've defined in Azure Boards. That includes queries defined under My Queries and Shared Queries. However, if you plan to share the workbook with other team members, then you should only work with a Shared Query. Other team members can't use the workbook or worksheet if it's based on a personal query stored under your My Queries folder.

Use list and query types

In general, you Use a flat list to bulk add or modify several types of work items at once, such as backlog items, tasks, bugs, or issues. Use a tree list to bulk add or modify work items and their tree-topology links.

Here's some more guidance:

Use an input list, flat list: To import a list of work items or create new work items, no hierarchy
Use an input list, tree list: To complete top down planning and publish parent-child linked work items
Use a query list, flat list: To create an Excel report based on the query of work items

Note

To create an Excel report, you're project collection must be configured to support Analytics reporting. For more information, see Create Excel reports from a work item query.
Use a query list, tree list: To view and modify the hierarchy and parent-child link relationships of many existing work items.

Use Excel features

You can use most Excel features when working with a list of work items. For example, you can use the following features:

Format a cell or apply conditional formatting to a cell or column
Cut and paste from one cell to other cells
Cut and paste a single row
Sum a column or add other formulas
Fill down cells
Filter
Add multiple worksheets to your workbook

Each worksheet in Excel can contain a different input list or query. However, all worksheets within the workbook must connect to the same project within an organization or project collection.

The following features work slightly differently when working with a worksheet connected to Azure Boards.

Each cell or column of cells corresponds to a work item field. Each field is associated with a data type. Excel won't allow you to enter data into a cell that doesn't meet the data type and requirements for that field.
You can only insert a single row at a time within the worksheet.
You can copy and paste multiple rows within the worksheet.
To move a work item within a hierarchy, cut the entire row and paste it under the work item you want as its parent.
Use Outdent and Indent to change the location of a work item within the tree.
Undo (Ctrl Z) may not work. If you do something that you want to revert, you can refresh the worksheet.

We recommend you publish and refresh your worksheet often to make sure your local work remains in sync with Azure Boards data store.

To learn more about Excel, see Basic Excel tasks .

Sort work items

You can sort work item flat lists using the Excel sort feature.

However, if you're working from a tree list, you don't want to do any type of sort. Doing so changes the tree structure and as such, the links between work items.

If you want to use Excel to manage the order of your work items as they appear in a team backlog, you can do that by using the Stack Rank or Backlog Priority field (Agile or Scrum process). You can set values in these fields, publish your worksheet, and refresh your backlog. Your backlog items should appear reordered based on lowest to highest number. However, the next time the backlog is reordered from the backlog, the values you entered are subject to change.

If you want to maintain a certain order of work items, consider adding a custom field to manage the sort order, and then use that within Excel to sort your flat list of work items. This option, however, won't change the order that appears in your backlog.

Tasks you can and can't do with Excel

You can do the following tasks:

Add tags and bulk update work items with tags as described in Add work item tags to categorize and filter lists and boards. Add the Tags field to your worksheet. Add multiple tags separated by a semicolon (;).
You can add simple text to a rich-text field, but if you're updating several work items in bulk, you may lose formatting in existing work items.
You can work offline and then reconnect and publish your changes. For details, see Connect Azure Boards to an Office client, Work offline, and reconnect.

You can't do the following tasks from an Excel worksheet:

You can't delete work items
You can't import or update test case steps or other test artifacts
You can't add work items in any other State than the new State
You can't add to a work item discussion thread

Import work items as a flat list

Open Excel and connect to your Azure Boards project. Use one of the four methods provided in Connect Azure DevOps project to Excel.

Note

When you connect to Azure Boards in the cloud, the Team Project Collection is automatically selected as there is only one collection associated with your Azure DevOps Services organization. When you connect to Azure Boards in an on-premises server, you choose the Team Project Collection prior to choosing the project.
In Excel, start with a blank worksheet. If you don't see the Team ribbon (or the Team menu if you use Excel 2007), see Azure DevOps Office integration issues.
Choose New List from the Team ribbon.
From the New List dialog, choose Input list.
Your worksheet is now bound to your project as an input list (Query[None]), flat list.

Specify the titles of the work items you want to add and their work item type.

Notice how the State and Reason fields automatically fill in with default values once your select the work item type.

Publish your worksheet.

Make sure your cursor is in a cell that contains data. Otherwise, the Publish button might appear disabled.

Notice how IDs are now assigned to your work items.

To assign values to other fields, open Choose Columns, add the fields, make the assignments, and publish your changes.

Tip

If you're adding work items that you want to appear on a team backlog, make sure that you add and specify the team's Area Path and Iteration Path. If you need to add Area Paths or Iteration Paths, choose the Edit Areas and Iterations link. The link opens a web browser to the Project Settings page. To learn more, see Define area paths and assign to a team and Define Iteration Paths and configure team iterations.
To open a work item to add more information, Choose the work item you want to open and then choose Open in Web Access. Before you do, make sure you publish any changes you've made.

A web browser opens and displays the work item.

If you make changes to the work item, you should then immediately refresh your worksheet to capture the changes.

Import work items as a tree list

You can add a hierarchy of work items linked using parent-child links or other tree topology link type.

Important

Don't sort a tree list. Sorting a tree list can change the hierarchical link relationships.

Starting from Step 5 from the previous procedure, convert your flat list, input list into a tree list. Choose a cell within the flat list and then choose Add Tree Level.

If the Add Tree Level is disabled, you're working from a query list. To convert your list to a tree list, you must first reconfigure your list to an input list.
Choose the link type to use when adding work items to a hierarchy, and then choose Convert. The most usual choice is Parent-Child. You can only select from tree topology link types. To learn more, see Link type topologies and restrictions.

Note the List type has changed to Tree, and a second Title column appears.
To add more levels to the hierarchy, choose Add Tree Level again. For example, if you want to add a hierarchy of Epics, Features, and User Stories, you'll want to have Title 1, Title 2, and Title 3 columns.

If you want to add tasks, add another tree level to have four title columns. To remove a column, see Remove a tree level.
Save your Excel file.
Enter the Work Item Type and Titles for the hierarchy you want to import. The State fields automatically fill in with default values once you select the work item type.
Publish your worksheet.

Make sure your cursor is in a cell that contains data. Otherwise, the Publish button might appear disabled.

IDs are now assigned to your work items. In the background, the link type you selected is used to link each work item in the hierarchy. Epics are linked to Features, Features are linked to User Stories.
To check the links made, choose a work item and choose Links and Attachments.

For example, here we show the Child and Parent links created for a Feature that was imported.
To enter a row under a work item where you want to add a child, choose the row and then choose Add Child.
To assign values to other fields, open Choose Columns, add the fields, make the assignments, and publish your changes.
To change the hierarchy, cut and paste the row of a work item to place it under the new parent. Make sure that you select the entire table row. When you publish the change, the old hierarchical links are deleted and the new hierarchical link are created.

You can use the or indent/outdent icons to demote or promote a work item within the tree hierarchy. Verify that the column to the left or right of the parent work item's title is a Title column. The header at the top of the column should read Title n, if it doesn't, add a tree level.

Remove a tree level

First, publish changes that you've made to work items before you remove a tree level. Removing a tree level requires a refresh, which overwrites data in the work item list. You'll lose any data you haven't published.
Next, delete any content under the tree-level Title number column you want to remove—the highest numbered column—. This column should be the highest numbered column in the tree.
Refresh your worksheet. The column containing empty values for the Title is removed.

You'll receive an error message if you attempt to delete the column.

Useful tips when working with a tree list

Excel interprets the data in the Title columns to determine the pattern of links between work items. When you publish changes, any of the following conditions can result in an error, an invalid link, or a tree link to be created between incorrect work items:
- A row between the work items is blank within the hierarchy
- The Title of a work item is in the wrong column. Make sure you enter a title for each child work item.
- Within a row, multiple Title columns contain data. Enter text in only one of the title columns within each row.
- The list was sorted. Don't sort a tree list. Sorting a tree list can change the hierarchical link relationships. If you do sort a tree list, you can recover from this operation by immediately refreshing.
To resolve an error, see Resolve invalid links.
A parent-child linked work item can only have one parent. You can't add the same work item task to two backlog items. Instead, you need to define distinct work item tasks.

Update work items in bulk with a query list

The easiest way to bulk update many work items is to create a query with the work items you want to update, and then open that query in Excel.

Tip

Follow these tips to keep your work in sync:

When you first open a saved worksheet, use (Refresh) to download the latest data from the data store.
Enter data for additional fields by adding columns to the worksheet using Choose Columns.
To avoid data conflicts, publish your additions and modifications often.
To prevent loss of data before you publish or refresh, save your workbook periodically.

From the web portal or Visual Studio, create the work item query that contains the work items you want to update. For details, see Create and save managed queries with the query editor.
Open Excel and connect to your Azure Boards project. Use one of the four methods provided in Connect Azure DevOps project to Excel.
If you opened your query from the web portal or Visual Studio, you're done. Make any changes you want. Open Choose Columns, add fields, make assignments, and publish your changes.
If you start from Excel, open a blank worksheet. You can add a worksheet to an existing workbook, as long as you're choosing a query from the same project the workbook is bound to.
Choose New List from the Team ribbon.
From the New List dialog, choose Query list, and select the query you want from the drop-down menu.

The icon next to each query indicates the query type. The first two query types, Flat list of work items and Work items and direct links are imported as flat list queries. Only the Tree of work items queries import as a tree list.
With the work items imported to Excel, make the modifications you want and publish your changes.

If you're working with a tree list, see also the information provided in Import a hierarchical list of work items.

Enable Tree commands

If the Tree group commands aren't available, your worksheet is configured as a flat list, query list. Convert the list to either an input list or a list based on a tree query to enable the Tree group commands. To learn how, see the next section on Change your list type or query.

Change your list type or query

You can change the work items listed in your worksheet. Specifically, you can:

Change your flat list to a tree list
Change from a query list to an input list
Change from an input list to a query list
Change the query your worksheet references

If you want to change your flat list to a tree list, you can. However, if your list is a query list, then you first need to reconfigure the list. You'll know that it's a flat list, query list as the Tree group commands are disabled.

Team ribbon, disabled Tree group commands

To convert your query list to an input list, follow these steps.

First, publish whatever changes you have made.
Next, on the Team ribbon, choose Configure, List.
Choose Refresh work items only and then Apply.

This choice changes the query list to an input list.
To convert from an input list to a query list, choose Refresh from query, select the query, and then Apply.

Add existing work items to your worksheet

If you're working from a query, modify your query to contain the work items you want. Then refresh your list. The other work items will appear in your list.

If you're working with an input list, complete these steps.

From the Team ribbon, choose Get Work Items.
Choose the method you want from the three options available.

If the work items are defined in another project, then first select the Project. Then, make your selections:
- Query. Use this method when you've defined a query that contains the set or superset of work items you want.
- IDs. Use this method when you know the IDs of the work items that you want to link to. In the IDs box, type the IDs of the work items that you want to find, separated by commas or spaces.
- Title contains. Use this method to find work items that have a common word or phrase in the title field. In the and type list, select the type of work item that you want to retrieve.
Note

To minimize the time required to run the query, narrow the filter criteria of the search.
Choose Find.

Only those work items defined for the selected project and specified work item type are listed. To sort on a column field, choose the column Title.
In the list of returned work items, select the check-box of one or more work items.
- Select each work item that should link to the current work item. You can also press the SHIFT key while clicking to select a range of work items, or press the CTRL key while clicking to select multiple work items.
- Choose Select All to select all work items in the list.

Add or remove column fields

If you start your worksheet with a New List, you'll see only a set of default field columns. You can add columns using the Choose Columns on the Team ribbon.

If you start your worksheet from an existing query, you'll see all the column fields defined for the query. From there, you can add columns using the Choose Columns. However, your additions don't modify the underlying query.

To assign values to other fields, choose Column Options to add the fields of interest.
- To filter the fields based on work item type, select the Work item type.
- To move or remove a field, choose the field and then select the > or < icons.
- To change the field sequence, move the field up or down in the list using the up and down arrows.
- You can add a rich-text field, such as the Description field, however you may lose some of the formatting upon publish.
Once the fields appear in the worksheet, assign values and publish your updates. When working with identity fields, ones that accept user accounts, see the next section, Select user accounts.
Save your worksheet.

Select user accounts

You can use the Select User feature to find user accounts and assign values to person named fields. Also, this feature provides access to the most recently used (MRU) values. If your team contains several hundreds or thousands of user accounts, you'll want to use this feature.

Tip

Without the Select User feature, you must enter user names exactly as they are in the database, or you'll receive data validation errors upon trying to publish.

If you haven't installed or updated to the latest version of Visual Studio (at least VS 2015.1 or later version, do that now. You need the latest update to access the Select User feature.
Choose an identity or person-named field to activate the Select User feature in the Team ribbon.

An identity or person-named field is a field that contains a user identity. These fields are typically synchronized to a database of user accounts, such as Azure Active Directory, Active Directory, or a Workgroup.
Begin typing the name of the user account and the Assign User dialog will automatically filter the results until you can select the account of interest.

Enter a letter to tab to the start of names beginning with that letter. Enter only user names as account aliases aren't recognized.

You'll notice that as you select user names, Excel remembers your recent selections and you can select the user accounts directly from the field.

Link work items

You can complete many actions from the Links tab of the Links and Attachments dialog. Specifically, you can:

Review the existing links defined for the selected work item
Add links to selected work items to one or more work items or select objects
Delete links
Open a linked work item (opens in the web portal)
Edit the link type of an existing link
Add columns to the Link list and sort on that list

For more information on linking work items, see Link user stories, issues, bugs, and other work items.

View and add links

You can't use the Links and Attachments dialog to bulk update work item links. You can only bulk update tree-topology link types using a tree list.

To link a work item to other work items, choose the work item and then choose Links and Attachments. From the Links tab, choose Link to and then choose the Link Type and work item(s) you want to link to. Choose OK and then Publish.

When finished, choose Close to dismiss the dialog.
To link several work items to the same work item(s), multi-select them by using Ctrl-click for consecutive rows, or Shift-click for non-consecutive rows.

Find work items to link to

From the Add link dialog, you can open a secondary dialog to choose one or more work items to link to. If you're going to find and list work items to link to by using a saved query, first define the query to use.

From the Add link dialog, choose the Browse button (Visual Studio) to open the following dialog.

Choose Link Work Items dialog

The Choose Linked Work Items dialog works in the same way as the Get Work Items dialog. To learn more, see Add existing work items to your worksheet described earlier in this article.

Add columns to the links list

From the Links tab, choose the Columns icon, and add the fields you want displayed. Here we add the Assigned to and State fields.
To reorder the links, choose the field to sort the list on that field.

This dialog works in the same way as the Get Work Items dialog. See Add existing work items to your worksheet described earlier in this article.

Open a linked work item

From the Links tab, choose the linked work item, right-click to open the context menu, and choose Open Linked Item.

Links and Attachments dialog, Links tab, Open Linked Work Item

The work item opens in your web portal.

Edit the link and change the link type

You can edit any link listed. You can change the link type and the work items linked to.

Choose the link and choose the Edit icon.
Change the link type as needed.
To change the work item linked to, enter the ID of the work item, or choose Browse to find the work item(s) to link to.

The Choose Linked Work Items dialog works in the same way as the Get Work Items dialog. To learn more, see Add existing work items to your worksheet described earlier in this article.

Add attachments

To add attachments, choose the work item, then Links and Attachments, and then the Attachments tab.

Choose the file you want to attach, then choose OK and then Publish.

When finished, choose Close to dismiss the dialog.
To add the same attachment(s) to several work items, multi-select them by using Ctrl-click for consecutive rows, or Shift-click for non-consecutive rows.

Create a report

You can create a report or chart from the web portal for flat-list queries. See Track progress by creating status and trend query-based charts.