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Dynamics CRM 2016: How to Easily Generate Excel Templates

Post Author: Joe D365 |

The ability to quickly generate Excel spreadsheets is an exciting new feature included with Dynamics CRM 2016. The feature allows you to create Excel templates tailored to display dynamic data on demand, and in today's blog, we will show you how easy it is to quickly generate excel templates in CRM! Let's begin!

There are two different paths you can follow to create an Excel template:

Method #1: From the Settings Menu

1. Click on Main > Settings > Templates.

Excel Templates

2. Click on Document Templates.

Excel Templates

3. On the top left corner, click on + New.

Excel Templates

Once a pop-up window titled Create Template from CRM Data opens, choose the following options:

4. Select a template to create: Excel Template.

5. Filter by entity: Activity.

6. Used saved view: My Activities.

7. You can also click on Edit Columns, if you want to add, remove, reorder, or change the properties of the columns to be exported to Excel.

8. Click on the Download File button.

Excel Templates

Method #2: From a List of Records (view)

1. Click on Main > Sales > Activities.

Excel Templates

2. Make sure the My Activities view is selected.

Excel Templates

3. Click on the Menu > Excel Templates > Create Excel Template.

Excel Templates

4. Finish by following steps 6 to 10 from Method #1.

Formatting the Excel Template

Open the Excel template. If you didn't change any columns, the Excel file should look like the following:

Excel Templates

The number of records you will see in the initial Excel template will depend on the number of activities you own.

Now this is the fun part! At this point, you can customize the spreadsheet as you wish. Feel free to add columns, add pivot tables, charts, format the list of activities, etc.

Excel Templates

IMPORTANT: iOS does not update pivot data charts when using the Microsoft Excel app for iOs. The pivot table for the charts may be created by an Administrator or another user with elevated privileges in Dynamics CRM, however, Microsoft's recommendation is to not include confidential information in the pivot tables created for the charts.

Another recommendation is to set pivot chart data to refresh automatically. This will be effective in most scenarios, besides the one mentioned in the previous instructions. This way, every time the file is downloaded and opened, it will display the current data.

1. Right-click each on pivot table and choose PivotTable Options.

2. Go to the Data tab and check Refresh data when opening the file.

Excel Templates

That's all for the blog today! You can learn more about Dynamics CRM 2016 here, and check out how to make Word templates too with CRM 2016 in this blog!

Happy CRM'ing!

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

2 comments on “Dynamics CRM 2016: How to Easily Generate Excel Templates”

  1. This blog is awesome, I just created my first template by following this and now I'm hooked! Thank you

  2. I had added some related entity fields in my template. i.e. opportunity - added Account fields such as address etc. When creating the template all were fine but when I came to run the template from a record the related entity fields were blank. Does anyone know how to overcome this?

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