Connect a Microsoft Office Document to Team Foundation Server

  • Article

If you want to add or modify Team Foundation work items by using Office Excel or Office Project, you must connect your worksheet or project plan to the appropriate server instance that is running Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and select the project collection that hosts the team project. After you establish this connection, the document finds and connects to the appropriate team project to exchange information. If you create a document which is started in Team Explorer, the document is connected to the team project automatically. If you create a document which is started in Office Excel or Office Project, you must manually establish the connection to the team project.

If the team project that contains work items for your Office Excel or Office Project document is moved to a different team project collection in the same instance of Team Foundation Server, the document will automatically be reconnected. However, if the team project is moved to a different instance of Team Foundation Server, you must manually reconnect the document to the server that contains the team project that contains the work items that are defined in the document.

Note

If you installed any edition of Visual Studio and you want to connect to Team Foundation Server by using Office Excel or Office Project, you must first install Team Explorer. You can find more information about how to install Team Explorer from the Microsoft Web site: Installation Guide for Team Foundation.

In this topic

  • Connecting an Office Document to a Team Project

  • Reconnecting a Document to a Different Team Project or Team Foundation Server

Required Permissions

To perform these procedures, you must be a member of the Readers group or have your View work items in this node permission set to Allow. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

Connecting an Office Document to a Team Project

To connect Office Excel or Office Project to a Team Project

  1. Perform one of the following tasks:

    • In Office Excel, open a new workbook and click the Team tab.

      In the Work Items group, click New List.

      If the Connect to Team Project dialog box appears, the worksheet is not connected to Team Foundation Server and you must continue with the remaining steps.

      If the New List dialog box appears, the worksheet is already connected to Team Foundation Server and you can skip the remaining steps.

    • In Office Project, switch to one of the following views: Gantt Chart, Task Entry, Task Usage, or Task Sheet.

      On the Team menu, click Choose Team Project.

      If Choose Team Project is not available, and other commands on the Team menu are available, the project plan is already connected to Team Foundation Server. You can skip the remaining steps.

  2. In the Select a Team Foundation Server list, click the name of the server that contains the team project from which you want to retrieve work items.

    If that server does not appear in the list, perform the following steps:

    1. Click Servers, and then click Add.

    2. In the Team Foundation Server name box, type the name of the server to which you want to connect.

    3. If Team Foundation Server uses a port number other than the default (8080) to communicate with client programs, type the appropriate port number in the Port number box, and then click OK.

    4. Click Close.

  3. Under Directory, click the name of the project collection that hosts the team project.

  4. In the Team Projects list, click the name of the team project that contains the work items that you want, and then click OK.

    The worksheet or project plan is now connected to a team project on the server that you specified.

    For Office Excel: You can create a work item list into which you can retrieve work items from the work item database, or in which you can create or modify work items. For information about how to create a work item list, see Create, Open, and Modify Work Items Using Office Excel.

    For Office Project: Team Foundation fields appear in the Office Project task sheet. The Office Project view is the Team System Gantt. For more information about how to create a project plan, see Create a Microsoft Project Plan from Team Foundation Work Items.

Connecting a Document to a Different Team Project Collection

To reconnect a document to a different team project collection

  1. Open the document that you want to reconnect to a different team project collection, and perform one of the following steps:

    • If you are using Office Excel, on the Team tab, in the Work Items group, click Configure, click Server Connection.

    • If you are using Office Project, on the Team menu, click Configure Server Connection.

    The Reconnect Document to Team Foundation Server Instance dialog box appears.

  2. Click OK only if the team project that contains the work items in the document has been moved to a different team project collection or server instance. Otherwise, click Cancel.

  3. In the Reconnect Document to Team Project Collection window, click the name of the server that contains the team project to which which you want to reconnect the document. The team project collection must contain the work items that are defined in the worksheet or project plan.

    If that server does not appear in the list, perform the following steps:

    1. Click Servers, and then click Add.

    2. In the Team Foundation Server name box, type the name of the server to which you want to connect.

    3. If Team Foundation Server uses a port number other than the default (8080) to communicate with client programs, type the appropriate port number in the Port number box, and then click OK.

    4. Click Close.

  4. Under Directory, click the name of the project collection that hosts the team project.

  5. In the Team Projects list, click the name of the team project that contains the work items that are defined in your worksheet or project plan, and then click OK.

    The worksheet or project plan is now reconnected to a team project on the server that you specified.

  6. Save the document to your local computer.

    Note

    Documents are bound to a specific team project and cannot be reconnected to other team projects.

See Also

Tasks

Work Offline and Reconnect to Team Foundation Server

Concepts

Managing Work Items Using Microsoft Excel Bound to Team Foundation Server

Scheduling Tasks and Assigning Resources Using Microsoft Project

Working in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project Connected to Team Foundation Server

Other Resources

Quick Tips and Operational Differences when Tracking Tasks Using Microsoft Project and Team Foundation