Enhance your Salesforce implementation with a highly versatile data management tool readily available in all of your Excel spreadsheets.
Highlights
- Export data from any standard or custom Salesforce object to Excel spreadsheets.
- Insert, update, merge, delete, and restore Salesforce records with confidence.
- Predefine and automate data operations to and from Salesforce, ensuring Excel files stay up to date with CRM changes.
- Easily keep track of all manual or automated changes between your spreadsheets and Salesforce.
- Connect Sharepoint to Salesforce and offer users readily available templates.
However much we would like to say that Salesforce users don’t heavily rely on Excel, that is still quite far from the reality. While Salesforce Reports, Dashboards, and List Views are used, if you were to remove the “Export Reports” permissions from all your users tomorrow, mayhem would probably ensue. Since Excel will continue being a valuable tool for business and technical users alike, connecting it to Salesforce is bound to not only enhance the user experience but also save both you and your users tremendous amounts of time.
Xappex’s XL-Connector 365 is built exactly for that – a way to allow seamless communication between Excel and Salesforce. On top of this, there are multiple added benefits within the functionality to help with data management in all shapes and forms, and retrieving the most up-to-date information for users who do not have Salesforce licenses. This alleviates the burden of some of the most time-consuming administrative tasks, such as data imports and manually updated reports. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?
This in-depth review will showcase the main XL-Connector 365 features, ideal use cases, and setup effort, as well as how fast your users can (and will) start making use of this tool.
Features
With both Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workspaces being used by companies across the world and within all industries, Xappex aims to transform the experience for everyone who interacts with either Excel, Excel Online, or Google Sheets to manipulate Salesforce data.
This post will be focused on XL-Connector 365, which is a plugin for all Excel users, be it online or in local files. Unlike the initial XL-Connector offering, XL-Connector 365 brings the functionality to many more users, irrespective of how they choose to work or collaborate with their colleagues. If your organization is using Google Sheets, make sure to take a look at G-Connector instead.

Bring Salesforce Data to Your Spreadsheets
Both end users and Salesforce professionals can spend quite a bit of time building reports or queries only to export them to Excel for further editing and various day-to-day tasks.
While Salesforce has significantly enhanced the capabilities within Reports, Excel is at times more convenient and accessible to colleagues who are not as proficient with Salesforce and feel more comfortable using a tool they have used for years (Excel).
XL-Connector 365 brings these tools together in a comprehensive solution, alleviating the pain of having to navigate to Salesforce before continuing working in a spreadsheet, or vice versa. Admins will no longer have to manipulate data in Excel first, then use another tool to import into Salesforce.

Fit for Both Business and Technical Users
XL-Connector 365 is an Excel add-in available both in the local app and online Excel version. The functionality is organized in a side panel, which can be accessed from the dedicated XL-Connector 365 tab that will appear at the top of the screen.
Exporting Salesforce data through the connector can be done in a matter of seconds if you already know what information you’re looking for. The tiles you will use for this are Import Data (to retrieve the records) and Refresh Data (to re-run the Report or Query and get the latest changes).
As a Salesforce Admin, chances are you will prefer to use an SOQL query, but users can do so too as the query builder allows them to select fields from the Record or Related Records without having to know SOQL. Keep in mind that while you have the options to Run or Run and Save, only if the query is saved will it be available for refresh at a later time – much like Salesforce Reports.

Any Salesforce Report you have access to can be searched and selected as a data source, just like in the example below. You can pick and choose the fields that are to be displayed in Excel without altering the report, and also add additional filters if need be.
Additional Settings and Options
You may have noticed that whenever a new import action is started, there are a few more selections to be made on top of the SOQL query or Report columns and filters. These include the behavior in the event of an error, as well as if existing spreadsheet data should be overwritten or appended following a refresh.
In the actual Options section, you can determine where the data will be located and name your action for later use if you’d like to save it as a Flow Step – more on that later! You can add the timestamp of the last refresh too, and for added privacy, even set a password for the spreadsheet.

Import Records to Salesforce
If you thought exporting data from Salesforce into spreadsheets was a breeze, wait until you try to insert, update, delete, or even restore Salesforce records. Since both you and your users will have to log in to Salesforce, the Salesforce permissions will be respected. For example, if the user doesn’t have delete permissions, they will not be able to leverage XL-Connector 365 to delete records.

Taking Import Wizard and Data Loader as the status quo, both rely on an Excel file being created before importing. XL-Connector 365 removes the need to go anywhere other than Excel, as it allows you to manipulate the data as you see fit first, then will simply push it to Salesforce.
From the comfort of your spreadsheet, new or existing records can be sent to Salesforce in just a few steps: select the Object, map manually what is not already mapped automatically based on the column name, define the identifier (even if you don’t have the record Id, another field can be used), then run the import.

Also, there are additional settings you can use, such as only updating selected rows, the option to make use of a constant, and even applying the Salesforce options for Account or Opportunity Owner changes, such as retaining the Account Team or notifying the new owner. You can also set the batch size and display the date and time that the update was last run.
Automate Away
Excel is, and will remain, a system-agnostic tool used across all industries to analyze and manipulate data, and also visualize it as graphs or pivot tables. The biggest challenge is to ensure that the information always remains up-to-date – in this case, it’s all about spreadsheets enriched with Salesforce data to reflect the continuous changes happening within your CRM.
XL-Connector 365 comes to the rescue with built-in automation capabilities, allowing you to predefine actions that either retrieve from or send data to Salesforce.
Flows and Flow Steps
Saving any of the operations we discussed above will result in a Flow Step being created automatically in one of the two available out-of-the-box: Pull Data or Push Data. You can also navigate straight to the Flows tab and start creating your own – Flow is ultimately a way to group Flow Steps, which can be any of the available data-related actions.
Having this option within XL-Connector 365 empowers you to create and reutilize repetitive processes. Flow can span across multiple sheets in your workbook, regardless of the object or action they are meant for. Additionally, users will be able to use the predefined Flows you already added to an Excel file instead of having to create them from scratch.
Flows can be triggered from the side panel on the homepage, or you can create a fully customized experience for your users with each Flow having its own button added directly on the spreadsheet that allows the users to simply click instead of searching for the specific action.

Scheduler
Each Flow you create can be set up to execute as often as every 5 minutes. The Scheduler tab allows you to create scheduled actions and be specific to the minute you’d like the associated Flow Steps to run.
While the manual options can be used on demand anytime, being able to schedule the situations that require it can save a lot of clicks. Keep in mind that the running user’s permissions will be used, so you should carefully consider what will potentially come in, as well as what updates could be pushed back to Salesforce. Additionally, even if having pull or pushes running every 5 minutes might seem a lot, this option is only available to users with an Enterprise Admin license which ensures that users won’t overuse the functionality without the administrator knowing. By creating one or multiple schedules, XL Connector 365 admins can achieve a close to real time data sync between spreadsheets and Salesforce, for any data feeding their pivots or charts, in no time!
Automatically Generated Event Logs
Event Log spreadsheets will be generated for every operation that happens in XL-Connector 365 that either alters spreadsheet data or Salesforce records, whether manual or automated. Subsequent operations will keep being logged, making it a great way to review any user actions, any Flow Steps running, and of course the results over time.

Data imports don’t always go according to plan, and when an error happens while executing a Flow, the Operations Event Log will contain all the details you need to resolve it. The actual error is included, alongside the individual rows that errored out.

Notifications
Whenever data is pulled or pushed to and from your spreadsheets as a result of a Flow Step, you can choose to be notified of both successes and failures, either via email or Slack. This way, even if you don’t visit the spreadsheet every day, you will always be up to date with how the automations behave and instantly know to jump in and check if any problems occur.

Discover Excel Merge by Xappex
Finding out that a tool such as Excel Merge exists (and it’s free) will definitely make you feel like it is a special day! This managed package, developed by Xappex, can be used together with XL-Connector 365 or on its own and allows users to export Salesforce data in a pre-formatted template to further use, share, or work within Excel – some of the most common use cases include quotes, invoice, but it ultimately can be a spreadsheet which includes any kind of Salesforce data. The functionality is available for both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic depending on the preference, but either way, it takes just minutes to set up.
All instructions are available in the dedicated XL-Connector Template Setup, alongside the mechanism to enable any Standard or Custom objects of your choice to be associated with one or multiple templates.

The templates should use mail merge syntax for them to be dynamic, while the Excel Merge features will take care of the rest once these prepared templates are assigned to their respective objects. In the example below, I chose to use the Account object and retrieve data about it as well as all associated Opportunities. You can also arrange the template exactly how you need the output document to look, as the formatting will be maintained after the record data is populated.

Downloading The Pre-Populated Excel File
You have the option to either relate an Excel template to a button or multiple templates to a component. We will explore both of these in Lightning Experience with the Account information template. There are two items to be added on the page, and if you’re using Dynamic Actions already, both can be added when editing the Record Page: the Get XL-File action and the XL-Connector Templates Lightning Component. Depending on the templates you selected for each of them, clicking on either the action or the download logo next to the template will prompt a download to your machine.
An added bonus of using this functionality is that you can control exactly what data users can download since the Export Reports Salesforce permissions are still in play if the user has access to the Report.

The resulting spreadsheet will contain the data defined in the template, but based on the record the download was triggered from.

Using Excel Online Spreadsheets
Excel Online optimizes the process even more, especially when collaborating with other internal or external stakeholders. Getting data from Salesforce directly in the workbook stored in SharePoint or OneDrive is also a possibility with Excel Merge. This is a separate component to be added on the record page, for which the document will be defined based on a manually triggered action existing in XL-Connector 365.

Once ready, the Excel online file will receive the record’s Id, the Account in the case below, based on which the retrieved data can be automatically filtered. While XL-Connector 365 is needed for this option due to the schedule action, the process remains just as easy.

Use Cases
With both Salesforce and Excel being the versatile tools that they are, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are an unlimited number of use cases for XL-Connector 365, especially since it can be used by a plethora of roles that need to manipulate Salesforce data: from business users to Salesforce Admins.
Salesforce Data for All Colleagues
Surely one thing that already came to mind after seeing this functionality is the ability to share Salesforce data with colleagues who do not have or need access to Salesforce, right? That’s definitely an option while using the XL-Connector Flows because files can be kept in sync with Salesforce on a schedule. This means that even colleagues who don’t have a Salesforce user will be able to access what they need – this way, everyone can collaborate and complete their day-to-day tasks without the added cost of a Salesforce license.

Duplicate Management
Duplicate records are something every Salesforce Admin has encountered and cleaning them up is not always a straightforward process – let alone having to manually merge them one by one. Once any duplicate Leads, Accounts, or Contacts are identified and you define the Id of the surviving record, it’s a matter of a few clicks to merge all of them with XL-Connector 365!

Mass Convert Leads
On top of duplicate management, there is yet another admin tool available in the side panel that can help save time, as well as the need for custom development in Salesforce: the option to mass convert Leads. Optionally, you can choose to change the owner or notify them at the same time, choose the Contact, Opportunity, and Account mappings, and of course check for duplicates.

Setup
Getting up and running with XL-Connector 365 takes a matter of seconds, given that the whole functionality is packaged in an Excel Add-in available in AppSource. The functionality will be surfaced as a new tab, as well as a sidebar, which you can use to navigate and leverage all features.

When opening the sidebar for the first time, you will have to log into Salesforce either directly or through the browser – both production and sandbox orgs are course supported choices. It would be a good idea to take the in-app tour to learn about all the tiles before deep-diving into each of them.

While managing the subscription as an admin, you always have the option to control what users are and are not allowed to do based on the agreed-upon process. For example, you may want users to export already existing Salesforce Reports on their Excel spreadsheets, but not allow them to use SOQL queries or Run All Flows.

Roadmap
If you are already looking forward to exploring the functionality above, know that the team at Xappex doesn’t stop here. XL-Connector 365 will receive quite a few enhancements soon, for users to make even more out of the tool. A new mechanism of data upload that will improve the upload speed about 50% on all bulk operations is being tested, alongside a UI redesign to make the experience even nicer for all users by introducing Recents / Favorites as well as a new look and feel of the Flows and Flow Steps.
Additionally, XL-Connector 365 will soon support other data sources and not only Salesforce, with the first one on the list being HubSpot, planned to become available by the end of Q1 2025. On top of this, new data-source agnostic flow steps such as “Notifications”, “Save Snapshot” (for historical data tracking) or “Run script” will be introduced, in order to turn the XL-Connector 365 Flows into true end to end automations that can be run manually, automatically, or directly from Salesforce.

Support
Xappex has put together both a comprehensive guide as well as various blog posts and even recently added video tutorials for you to find everything you need about XL-Connector 365, but we all know that at times there could be specific questions that need that additional bit of support, right? You can quickly get in touch with the Xappex support team at support@xappex.com or simply use the chat on their website; they will be more than happy to help with your questions!
Pricing
Considering the sheer amount of tasks that XL-Connector 365 can help both you and your business users with, you would be wary to check the pricing, right? As you will notice by taking a closer look at the dedicated pricing page on the Xappex website, there is no need to worry, as you can even use a free version, before committing to any purchase.
There are currently three options available, and the licenses will provide you with access to both XL-Connector and XL-Connector 365. The free tier, with limited functionality but enough for you to test part of the features for yourself. The team player is a good option for those power users who will heavily rely on the functionality and automations. The admin license, starting at $299/user/year, will grant you access to all features and functionality.
Excel Mail Merge is a totally free package and can be used to retrieve Salesforce record information into templates even without XL-Connector 365, but combining both ensures a seamless export, import, and of course, automated experience.
Summary
All in all, supercharging Excel locally or online with access to extract, automate or modify Salesforce data has never been easier! Whether you are a user, power user, or Salesforce professional, working with Salesforce records in spreadsheets doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming and XL-Connector 365 makes sure of that – all while your workbooks remain up-to-date with the latest CRM data.
You can get started today with the XL-Connector 365 free version, but also enjoy a 30-day trial for all the features this application has to offer, giving you plenty of time to explore both simple and more complex recurring tasks!