Work Offline and Reconnect to Team Foundation Server

An advantage to using Office Excel or Office Project to add or modify work items is that you can work offline using these applications. Complete the following procedures to disconnect an Office Excel work item list or an Office Project plan from Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and later reconnect to synchronize the document with the work item database.

In this topic

• Disconnecting a Document from the Network

• Reconnecting a Document to Team Foundation Server

Required Permissions

To perform these procedures, you must be a member of the Contributors group, or your View work items in this node and Edit work items in this node permissions must be set to Allow. For more information, see Team Foundation Server Permissions.

Disconnecting a Document from the Network

To disconnect a document from the network

1. Open the document that you want to change while you are offline.

2. Perform one of the following steps:

   • If you are using Office Excel, on the Team tab, in the Work Items group, click Refresh.

   • If you are using Office Project, on the Team menu, click Refresh.

   This step refreshes the work item list to retrieve the latest information from the work item database.

3. If you are using Office Excel, add to the work item list the columns for all fields that you want to modify.

   You cannot add columns when the work item list is not connected to Team Foundation Server. For information about how to add columns, see Add or Remove Columns in a Work Item List.

4. Disconnect your computer from the network, or save the work item list file and copy it to another computer that is not connected to Team Foundation Server.

   An error message might appear that tells you that the Office program could not establish a connection with Team Foundation Server.

5. Change the work item list as needed.

   Note

   You cannot create most types of links between work items when the work item document is not connected to Team Foundation Server. The exceptions are parent-child links in an Office Excel tree list and both parent-child and predecessor-successor links in an Office Project plan. For more information about how to create both parent-child links and predecessor-successor links in Office Project, see Sequence or Subordinate Tasks in Office Project.

Reconnecting a Document to Team Foundation Server

To reconnect a document to Team Foundation Server

1. Reconnect your computer to the network, or copy the file to a computer that is connected to Team Foundation Server.

2. If you changed the document while you were offline, perform one of the following steps:

   • If you are using Office Excel, on the Team tab, in the Work Items group, click Publish.

   • If you are using Office Project, on the Team menu, click Publish Changes.

3. If you did not change the document while you were offline, perform one of the following steps:

   • If you are using Office Excel, on the Team tab, in the Work Items group, click Refresh.

   • If you are using Office Project, on the Team menu, click Refresh.

4. Resolve any data validation errors or conflicts that occur. For more information, see Working in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project Connected to Team Foundation Server.

See Also

Tasks

Connect a Microsoft Office Document to Team Foundation Server

Create, Open, and Modify Work Items Using Office Excel

Create a Microsoft Project Plan from Team Foundation Work Items

Publish or Refresh Work Items in Office Project

Publish Work Items in Office Excel

Concepts

Working in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Project Connected to Team Foundation Server