There is a lot of users out there who are finding a great way to get rid of a shared Excel spreadsheet is to create a list in SharePoint, and using datasheet views simply creating an online version of their spreadsheet. Various users can then have access to it, and can edit and add data to the online spreadsheet. Using the datasheet, users can also export the data to Excel or Access where they can do further reporting or charting on the data.

One limitation I thought it had was the ability to bulk add data to a SharePoint list - I thought even in the datasheet view you could only add data one row at a time. This is not the case (and maybe I should have read the documentation a little more...). It is completely possible to bulk add data (at any time) to a SharePoint list by using the datasheet view.

Simply

1. Create a datasheet view of your list (in the same format as the Excel spreadsheet you are going to copy from)
2. Highlight the data in your Excel spreadsheet and click copy
3. In your datasheet view, click the first box next to the * in the bottom row, and then paste (This is the only real tricky bit - make sure you DO NOT select the entire row. Just the first box)
4. And lo and behold, the data magically pastes into your datasheet

Of course there are a couple of gotchas. Here is some more information on that (straight from the Access Web Datasheet Help):

When you paste the contents of the Clipboard, new rows will be added to the bottom of the Datasheet view if necessary. However, if the view does not have sufficient columns, the paste operation will fail. A paste operation will also fail in the following situations:

• Some or all of the destination cells are read-only
• Pasting the contents into the selected cells will make them fail the validation rules
• Attempting to paste data that does not match the data type of the destination cells
• Attempting to paste data into a calculated column

When you attempt to paste data of one type into a column of a different type, the list will try to convert the source data to match the type of the destination column. For example, if the source data is numeric, and the destination cells support text, source data will be converted to text and then placed in the destination cells. If the source data cannot be converted to match the destination cell type, the paste operation will fail.

With MOSS 2007 you can now integrate incoming email capability into your sites - this basically means that your user's are given a unique email address, and whenever they email that address then the content of the email (and any attachments) is automatically added to your SharePoint list. This is a great facility if you want to enhance your workforce by being able to:

• Archive team email (by CC'ing in the SharePoint list email)
• Create a community
• Create a central information exchange
• Receive or offer technical support

There are obviously heaps of applications for this, and you can read all about it's functionality at the Microsoft Office site.

It is also quite fiddley to implement and setup for your organisation. Luckily both Combined Knowledge and Todd Klindt have come to the party with some great articles here and here on how to get this going, including Exchange settings and some gotcha's you might come across.  There is also some TechNet information available.

A different issue that I came across was when SharePoint created new objects in the Global Address List, then someone went to email using that address, the email only came through as text format (not rich format) and no attachments ever came through. This left me banging my head against a wall for some time. Luckily I stumbled upon the following fix (since we were using Exchange 2003) which gives a couple of additional required attributes that need to be added to the contact.

Some other interesting facts that I have found out since using email enabled lists:

• When sending from anonymous accounts, the email will be listed as from 'System Account', however if you look at the version history for the item you can find the originating email
• There are several types of lists that cannot receive incoming email including Links lists, Wikis, Blog categories, Blog comments, Surveys, Tasks, Project Tasks and Contacts.
• You will probably need an alias address on the AD contact address for the list if you wish to email this from externally (ie myList@MyDomain.com)
• Finally test all the different configurations. There are a number of settings that can be tweaked at both the list level and in central administration

In general I have found email enabled lists (incoming e-mail) to be a great new feature for SharePoint 2007. It is well worth setting up, and while it is a bit painful at first, once it is going it is easy for anyone to use. Just be careful in making sure you can still police the contents, viruses and spam that you might end up getting in your communities.