Do you want to make your team collaborate on beautiful spreadsheets by integrating your Excel files directly into your Confluence documents?
Here are a few simple steps on how to do it using Elements Spreadsheet:
1. Go to your Confluence page where you want to import your Excel file and insert the Spreadsheet macro.
2. Then, select «Import file«.
3. Click on the «Browse» button to select your Excel document on your computer.
4. Once your file is selected. Click on the «Ok» button to start importing your document.
5. Your document is now fully ready to be edited from your Confluence page in the Spreadsheet editor.
The app fully embraces the Confluence tables look & feel – you can even use Date Pickers and @mentions in your tables.
If you want to see what else you can do with Elements Spreadsheet, be sure to check out our documentation.
Interested in trying the app? You can find our product page right here.
Software developer Atlassian introduced Confluence in 2004 as a team collaboration product aimed at developing wiki-style knowledge bases for corporate use. Since sharing information is essential to its purpose, typical business spreadsheets, such as those produced by Microsoft’s Excel, are natural for inclusion. Confluence is bundled with a utility that allows direct import of Excel, Word and PowerPoint file formats.
Office Connector
-
Make sure your version of Confluence is 2.10 or later; the Office Connector does not work with earlier versions. Office Connector allows the import of Excel documents in the XLS and XLSX formats and Word documents in the DOC and DOCX formats, provided the files are compatible with Office 97 to Office 2007 formats. The system administrator can control Office Connector and aspects of it used in your version of Confluence, so it is possible changes to Confluence itself may be needed before you can upload your spreadsheet.
Importing Excel Spreadsheets Using a File System
-
Navigate to the Confluence page to which you want to attach your spreadsheet. From the menu bar, choose “Tools” and click “Attachments.” Choose “Browse” and navigate to the chosen spreadsheet file. Click the file to highlight it and click “Open.” Optionally, you can add a file name or description in the window that opens, and, if desired, you can choose “Attach More Files” for additional spreadsheets. When you are ready, choose “Attach” to connect your spreadsheets to the Confluence page. While you can add multiple spreadsheets to a page, you cannot attach a folder containing those spreadsheets.
Importing Excel Spreadsheets Using Drag-and-Drop
-
There are several ways to drag-and-drop spreadsheets into Confluence. When you navigate to the Confluence page where you wish to place your spreadsheet, you can drag the file from the desktop or a window outside Confluence onto that page. Alternatively, you can drag files to the Attachments or Editor views for that page. When you use the “Insert Link” or “Insert Image” dialogs from the Insert menu, you can drag a spreadsheet file to any tab to create an attachment.
Working With Attached Files
-
Once your spreadsheet is attached to a Confluence page, you can directly edit the spreadsheet, provided you have Microsoft Office or OpenOffice installed on your computer. These edits won’t update the data in the version already connected, though you can attach the new file as you normally would. Confluence will use the most recent version, rename the old file and keep the data as a previous version. Importing an Excel spreadsheet into a Word document may allow you to format your data differently or break it over several Confluence pages.
Importing your Excel files in Confluence can bring many benefits to your team:
- Centralizing information. No more searching in different drives or mailboxes to find the latest version of the file you want. No more wondering if someone worked on the document on their personal desktop and you are not informed. With a single Confluence sheet the data you look at will always be up-to-date.
- Fostering team collaboration. You and your team can work on the same document, inside the collaborative environment of Confluence. Thus reducing the risk of errors and the time and effort necessary to maintain multiple file versions and send them internally.
- Contextualizing data. By embedding your spreadsheets in Confluence, you can surround the tables with descriptions and comments to help colleagues understand the data and what insights they can get from it.
As you can see the advantages are numerous, but when looking at how to take the leap and integrate Excel tables in your Confluence page there are plenty of options to choose from. Let’s have explore the alternatives available and discuss which ones are best suited to collaborate on data in Confluence.
Pull data from Excel to Confluence: your 3 options
The recent versions of Confluence allow you to pull data from Excel to Confluences in various ways. To help you determine which one is right for you, we’ll briefly explore the different solutions to add spreadsheets in Confluence in the section below.
Using the Atlassian companion app
The plugin adds an edit button that allows you to open your files in Excel, then save the modifications directly on your Confluence page.
However, this method moves away from the collaborative spirit of Confluence as you open an external app. On top of that the file rendered on the page is a miniature version of the table that lacks any form of display option.
Note: On Cloud, you won’t be able to edit files using the Companion app after 31 March 2022 as Atlassian will remove the app from its Cloud platform.
Choosing the Confluence Office connector
If you do not use the companion app, you have the option of using a browser depending on your office version (see Office connector documentation) to edit an Office document attached to a Confluence page.
Simply go into the page attachments list, and you should see an Edit in Office button beside the attachment you want to edit.
The file will automatically open with Excel and the modifications will be saved directly on your Confluence page.
This is an other simple option but again lacks any kind of collaborative spirit or display properties to make your table enjoyable to use and read by your team.
Using an external plugin like Elements Spreadsheet
At Elements we found those options were too limited and curbed our productivity. That is why we created Elements Spreadsheet, a simple Confluence plugin that allows you to transfer your data from Excel to Confluence in a few clicks.
The plugin allows you to display dynamic tables seamlessly in Confluence. It uses native Confluence features like user mentions and dates, support formulas, data filtering, dropdown lists and is fully compatible with your Excel files.
To have a glance at how well the app can integrate with your team processes, you can check some of our detailed use-cases:
- Analyze your sprint retrospectives using Elements Spreadsheet
- Configure a pricing calculator for your sales proposal
- Manage your events organization directly in Confluence
Import an Excel file into Confluence using Elements Spreadsheet
How your Excel sheets are rendered is often just as important as the content. Here are our top tips and best practices in order to make the import process smooth and ensure your data is presented in a clear way.
Best practices for preparing your Excel document before importing it in Confluence
These general guidelines will help ensure that your table will be as close to the original as possible when importing it to Elements Spreadsheet for Confluence.
- Apply the correct data format: For instance be sure your dates cells are in the date format. This way they will match the native Confluence dates aspect after the import.
- Format your data as a table in Excel if you want your rows to display alternating row colors. The app will detect it automatically and apply alternating row colors to the corresponding area.
- Make sure to not have an empty first row, and that the first row is your header row with names for the data in the corresponding column.
Importing your Excel spreadsheet in Confluence
Now that your data is prepared, let’s look at how to import it in a few simple steps using Elements Spreadsheet:
Go to your Confluence page where you want to import your Excel file and insert the Spreadsheet macro.
Select “Import file” and click on the “Browse” button to select your Excel document on your computer.
Once your file is selected. Simply click on the “Ok” button to import your document.
Note: To be available on your Confluence page, you have to save your imported document in the editor (even if you don’t edit it).
That’s it, you’ve pulled your Excel spreadsheet into Confluence. Let’s now see how to optimize the way it’s rendered.
Display options for your Elements Spreadsheet documents
When the page is in edit mode, simply click on the Spreadsheet macro. You have 3 sets of buttons popping-up at the bottom:
- Edit to configure the advanced rendering options.
- Shortcuts to adjust the width of your table in display mode: Centered, Wide or Full Width.
- Delete to remove the table from the page.
If you click on Edit, a pop-up window will appear with multiple options to configure the sheet rendering mode.
First, your Spreadsheet can be rendered in your Confluence page as a Table, in that case it will be rendered as a standard spreadsheet inside you Confluence page.
The alternative is to render it as an Icon, in which case only a Spreadsheet App icon is displayed with the document name. This can be useful in case you have very long or large tables that you don’t want to fill your page space with. It will only display a placeholder icon and clicking on it will open the document in full-screen.
If you chose the Table mode, you can now pick if you want to:
- Display the Full Screen / Edit / Export buttons when the Confluence page is in display mode.
- Have the table width to match the edit mode width, or always fill all the section available space.
- View all the sheets and navigate between them by clicking on the different tabs, or display some selected tabs only. This allows you to hide tabs with less useful information relative to the context of the page and control what you want your team to get out of the table.
An embedded spreadsheet fully integrated in your Confluence page
Spreadsheets are an integral part of today’s project work and they shouldn’t be isolated from the wiki information. By pulling Excel data inside Confluence with Elements Spreadsheet, you’re able to offer a seamless experience with all the information centralized in Confluence.
If you want to see what else you can do with Elements Spreadsheet, be sure to check out our documentation.
Interested in trying the app?
Skip to content
1. Create the table in Microsoft Excel.
2. Open this page in browser: http://excel2jira.bluurgh.com/
3. Paste the table from Microsoft Excel into the input box on the page.
4. Click on “Convert Me Now” button
5. Place the cursor at the intended insertion point in the wiki document.
6. Click on “Insert more content” (+) button on Wiki toolbar
7. Click on “Markup”
8. Paste converted markup from step 2 in the left pane and verify the preview.
9. Click on “Insert”
10. Review and verify the inserted content and make any correction if needed.
Permalink
Cannot retrieve contributors at this time
excel-to-confluence
A simple web page to export Excel sheets to confluence
Usage
- Drag and drop your excel file in the drop area
- Select the sheet you wish to export
A preview showing the expected result will be displayed - input your Page Id and Page title and press Upload to upload the table to confluence.
Manual upload
In case you cannot or don’t wish to upload directly you can go to the Manual Upload tab and copy the source code.
This content can be pasted directly in your confluence page (in edit mode using the top right source code button)
Conditional formatting
The conditional formatting support is very limited.
- With conditional formatting parsing can take a very long time for big Excel files (50s for 50Mb file)
- currently only Cell value equals or Cell value between are supported.
Fee free to open an issue or submit a merge request for additional support - Multiple conditional formatting rules applied on the same exact cell range are not supported (due to openpyxl base library support)
Development
copy and fill both app/config.json
and nginx/nginx.conf
from their respective templates
Usage
After starting the container:
- just go to the web page (<server_name>:5443, port 5443 if ssl if https not configured)
- Follow above user documentation
Dev
if you wish to spawn the app container standalone:
docker run --rm --name excel-to-confluence -v ./app:/app -p 5000:5000 excel-to-confluence
Contributions
Contribution are more than welcome using regular merge requests process.
Please follow PEP8 standard as much as possible