Add SharePoint list to Outlook 365

Wouldn’t it be perfect if your entire company could share a contact list of clients or prospects? It’s easy with Office 365!

The following steps explain how to create a shared contact list in Office 365 that will be accessible to any of your staff members with an Office 365 Mailbox. If you’ve been looking for someone to manage issues like this for you, INFINIT offers CompleteCare+ Office 365. Whether it’s taking care of your shared contacts list, building your SharePoint site, or teaching you how to conduct online meetings, INFINIT can take care of all your day-to-day Office 365 tasks. Contact us to learn more.

Step 1. Create a Contacts App in SharePoint

Go to SharePoint site you would like to add the list of contacts to. Click on the gear icon in the top right and select “Add an app”.
Select “Contacts” and give your Contacts app a name. Once it has been created, you can start adding contacts.

Step 2. Manage permissions

Permissions for the contact list will be managed like any other object in SharePoint. You can choose to let it inherit permissions from the site the contact list is located in, or your can chose to break inheritance and customize it for your needs.

Depending on the purpose of the shared contacts list, it might be best practice to restrict who can edit and add contacts to a small number of a people while giving everyone else access to see them.

Here are instructions on how to manage permissions in SharePoint.

Step 3. Add Contacts Folder to Outlook

Each user will need to add the new contacts folder to their Outlook client. First, open SharePoint and navigate to the Contacts list. In SharePoint, expand the “List” tab in the ribbon and select “Connect to Outlook”.

You will be asked to allow the website to open a program on your computer. Click “Allow”. When Outlook prompts “Connect this SharePoint Contacts List to Outlook?”, click “Yes”. You will then see the contacts list under “Other Contacts” in the People window of the Outlook client.

Still need some help? Watch this video:

For more training on Microsoft SharePoint check out Webucator training services.

harmon.ie offers a couple of methods to work with SharePoint items while offline:

harmon.ie adds the SharePoint option Connect to Outlook which synchronizes a SharePoint library or folder and makes its items available offline using Microsoft Outlook.

To enable the feature:

1. Add the ConnectToOutlookMenu registry key to harmon.ie root key, and set the [default] value data to true.
2. Restart Outlook.

To learn how to centrally enable this feature to all harmon.ie users, read harmon.ie for Outlook - Administrator's Settings.

To connect a SharePoint location to Outlook:

1. Right-click the location and select Connect to Outlook Folder.
   
2. Outlook prompts you to approve connecting this SharePoint location to Outlook. Click Yes.
3. Wait while Outlook downloads the SharePoint items to your computer.
   The library and its subfolders appear under a folder called SharePoint Lists. The parent libraries of this location are also shown.
   

Limitation

Due to an Outlook limitation, it is not possible to edit and update SharePoint items from Outlook if they reside in a document library that requires check out.

As a workaround:

1. Check out the document you want to edit.
2. Open the document from Outlook, and click Edit Offline.
3. Edit the document, save, and close.
4. Reopen the document from Outlook, make a small change [undo if the change is not required].
5. Save and close the file. You will be prompted to check it in.
6. Check in. The document is updated on the server.

If your organization has SharePoint and you spend most of your day in your Inbox, keep reading. In this blog post, I will explain how you can synchronize various SharePoint lists with Outlook. That means that you will be able to interact with SharePoint without leaving your Inbox! That means you will be more productive -what a way to impress your boss!

Sync SharePoint with Outlook – what exactly can you sync?

SharePoint allows to sync the following SharePoint web parts [lists] to your Outlook:

• Calendar
• Tasks
• Contacts
• Discussion Board
• Document Library

Pre-requisites for SharePoint Sync with Outlook

• SharePoint
• Outlook [installed on your desktop]. You cannot sync from SharePoint to Outlook online

I will now walk you through the steps on How to Sync a SharePoint Calendar to Outlook. Same steps would apply when you want to sync other SharePoint web parts to Outlook [contacts, tasks, etc.]

1. Navigate to the web part you want to sync to Outlook
2. Click on the tab above to open additional commands
3. Click on Connect to Outlook button
4. The pop-up will appear, asking you to confirm the sync. Click Allow
5. Your list will now sync to your Outlook

Below you can see an image of how synchronized SharePoint Calendar looks in Outlook. It actually appears side-by-side to my Personal Calendar. When you synchronize other lists like Contacts and tasks, same logic will apply: your SharePoint Tasks will appear next to your Personal Tasks, same with Contacts, there will be 2 lists – Personal and synchronized from SharePoint.

Important to remember!

All of the SharePoint web parts that you can synchronize to Outlook are 2-way syncs [meaning that any changes you make in SharePoint will automatically synchronize to Outlook and vice versa!] So that means if I add an event to “SharePoint-sync’d Calendar in Outlook, it will appear in SharePoint online Calendar as well. Exception is a Document Library: that is only 1-way sync [only downloads latest files to Outlook, but does not allow to edit files in Outlook, just access in read-only mode]

• Calendar [SharePoint Outlook, 2-way sync]
• Tasks [SharePoint Outlook, 2-way sync]
• Contacts [SharePoint Outlook, 2-way sync]
• Discussion Board [SharePoint Outlook, 2-way sync]
• Document Library [SharePoint => Outlook, 1-way sync]

As matter of fact, when you try to even delete a document that was synchronized from SharePoint, you will get the message below…

Recommendation

I suggest you do not synchronize Document Libraries to Outlook. The interface in Outlook to access the files is clunky [if you have subfolders] and if you have lots and lots of files, it just won’t look pretty. If you really need your files available offline, either download them ahead of time or sync your document library using OneDrive for Business

I can definitely see a benefit of synchronizing calendars, contacts, tasks and even discussion board [which allows you to participate in a threaded discussion without leaving your Outlook]. The synchronization feature allows you to access certain data and work with it without leaving Outlook. Less clicks and less searching means you are going to be more productive now!