When you publish a list and choose to link the list, you must manage synchronization between the local Microsoft Excel list and the SharePoint list. The List toolbar provides two buttons that allow you to choose how you wish to handle updates to the list data.

 Synchronize List

On the List toolbar, click Synchronize List to publish any local changes to the SharePoint list, and bring any changes made to the SharePoint list down to the local Excel list.

If changes you make in Excel conflict with changes made by another user on the SharePoint Site, Excel displays the Resolve Conflicts and Errors dialog box. You can do one of the following:

• Resolve each conflict individually   
  • To use the changes made by another user to the list on the SharePoint Site, click Discard My Changes.
  • To override the changes made by another user to the list on the SharePoint Site, click Retry My Changes.
• Resolve all conflicts at once   
  • To use all changes made by another user to the list on the SharePoint site, click Discard All My Changes.
  • To override all changes made by another user on the SharePoint site, click Retry All My Changes.
• Unlink the lists   
  • To remove the link to the SharePoint List, click Unlink My List.

    You can continue to make changes to your list in Excel, but you will no longer be able to synchronize with the list on the SharePoint site.

 Discard Changes and Refresh

On List toolbar, click Discard Changes and Refresh to discard local changes to the list and download the current copy of the list from the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Web site.

Note  Synchronization is not automatic. Unlike a standard link in Excel (that is, between two cells), you must manually synchronize or discard local changes to the list. This is important because you are not prompted to do anything with local changes to a linked list when the file is saved or closed. You are only notified that the file has unsynchronized local changes when the file is opened.