Azure DevOps Excel add-in not working? Fixes for the most common problems

Editing work items in Excel, and the Open in Excel button, both depend on the Azure DevOps Office Integration add-in. It's a COM add-in for Excel on Windows, and most problems come down to it being missing, disabled or holding a stale cache. Here are the fixes, roughly in the order you should try them.

1. There is no Team tab in Excel

The Team tab isn't part of Office; the add-in adds it.

1. Install Azure DevOps Office Integration 2019. It's a free download on the Visual Studio downloads page, and it's also installed with Visual Studio when you select the Office integration component. Close Excel while it installs.
2. Open Excel and go to File → Options → Add-ins. At the bottom, choose COM Add-ins in the Manage list and select Go. Tick Team Foundation Add-in.
3. If it isn't in that list, choose Disabled Items in the same Manage list. Excel can disable an add-in after it caused a crash; enable it there and restart Excel.

The Team tab only exists in the desktop version of Excel on Windows. Excel for the web and Excel for Mac don't support the add-in at all; see Azure DevOps work items in Excel on a Mac.

2. TF80012: "The document cannot be opened because there is a problem with the installation"

This usually means Excel can't load the add-in that the workbook was created with.

• Check the add-in is enabled (step 2 above) and not under Disabled Items.
• Repair or reinstall Azure DevOps Office Integration, then restart Windows.

3. Excel crashes or hangs right after you sign in

A common cause is a corrupt local cache of the add-in. Close Excel, delete the contents of these folders, and try again:

• %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Team Foundation\8.0\Cache
• %LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp\Microsoft\Team Foundation\9.0\Cache

If it only fails for one organization, also remove the saved credentials for dev.azure.com in Windows Credential Manager, so the add-in asks you to sign in again.

4. "Open in Excel" does nothing or isn't there

• The button comes from the Azure DevOps Open in Excel extension, which an organization admin has to install first.
• It hands the query to Excel on your computer, so the Office Integration add-in must be installed and working (steps 1 to 3).
• It works on query results; if nothing happens, check the add-in by opening Excel and using Team → New List directly.

Still stuck? Edit the work items without the add-in

If you mainly want to change many work items at once, you don't need Excel for it:

• Bulk edit in the query results: select several items, open the context menu and choose Edit to set one or more fields to the same value.
• CSV export and import: Export to CSV from a query, edit the file, and bring it back with Boards → Work items → Import Work Items.
• A spreadsheet grid in the browser: Bulk Editor (made by us) opens a query in an editable grid inside Azure DevOps Services, with paste from Excel, validation before publishing and a clean .xlsx export. Nothing to install on your computer; there is a free plan.

A longer comparison of these options: How to bulk edit Azure DevOps work items without Excel.