Salesforce Account and Contact Owner Match: Using Flow Automation for Efficient ABMSalesforce offers a powerful modern interface for managing data, but many companies prefer using Microsoft Excel for bulk updates and general data maintenance. Excel’s functions, advanced features, and familiarity sometimes make it an easy choice.
But this approach is not without problems. The constant process of filtering data, exporting segments, identifying issues, performing updates, and re-importing that data back into Salesforce is extremely time-consuming and prone to complications.
Naturally, companies look for solutions to bridge the gap between Microsoft Excel and Salesforce and cut out some of that tedious work.
Salesforce Excel connector apps allow you to populate your Excel spreadsheet with real-time data from your Salesforce database. There, Salesforce’s API enables you to use standard Excel functionality to filter records, create new records, bulk-update existing records, and use data for reporting and visualization purposes.
This article will cover some of the best Salesforce Excel connector apps to help you manage and maintain your Salesforce data.
XL-Connector, formerly Enabler4Excel, is the most popular Excel connector app on the Salesforce AppExchange. This Salesforce app integrates your Salesforce CRM and Excel, allowing you to manage Salesforce data and metadata directly in Excel.
With XL-Connector, you can:
With XL-Connector, your Salesforce data is pulled from your database to your Excel spreadsheet. There, you can manipulate the data using Excel’s advanced features, and push it back to Salesforce using the API.
XL-Connector limits any worksheet to one million records updated at any one time. For most organizations, that should be more than enough—and may have you pushing up against the limits that Microsoft Excel can handle, anyway.
Sifting through XL-Connector’s reviews on Salesforce AppExchange, the feedback is shining. The app has the highest number of reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange, while holding an impressive rating of 4.8 out of 5. Users often cite the combination of simplicity and powerful functionality when discussing what they like about the app. For many, it seems that XL-Connector is their most used Salesforce data management tool.
XL-Connector delivers a lot of bang for your buck at just $8.25 per month, per computer.
E2Excel is a popular Salesforce Excel connector app. While much less powerful overall than XL-Connector, E2Excel’s simplicity and free availability make it an ideal option for many companies.
Unlike XL-Connector, which connects to all relevant data in your Salesforce database, E2Excel can only pull data from list views in Salesforce. For objects that do not have direct access to a list view, E2Excel is unable to generate the data.
E2Excel allows you to export data From Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity, and sObject list views.
This is valuable for companies that spend resources exporting data from Salesforce using the standard interface and loading it into Excel. E2Excel makes this data export happen automatically, cutting out many manual steps.
Additionally, E2Excel’s “Export to Excel” button can be added to page layouts, allowing you to export list views on relevant pages quickly.
However, E2Excel cannot bulk-update, merge, or import data on its own. It is strictly for pulling Salesforce data to Excel quickly and easily. Once the data is edited in Excel, it can be imported using standard processes.
While reviews for E2Excel are generally positive, some customers lament that E2Excel cannot export all data and limits them to data from list views.
But as E2Excel is a free tool, it’s hard to argue against the value and easy list exporting it brings to the table.
Excel.io is a powerful Salesforce Excel connector app, providing numerous exporting and importing features that help users streamline their data maintenance and analysis processes.
With Excel.io, you can export data from any list view for both standard and custom objects. Additionally, the app also supports Lightning Experience list views.
When you install Excel.io, it will add buttons to your list view pages. These will allow you to import data directly on list view pages.
You can also export any list of records quickly and automatically by passing them into the custom Lightning component which is driven by the Excel Exporting Engine.
Excel.io makes any list view in your Salesforce database easily accessible by bypassing the time-consuming process of exporting data and instead making it consistently available in Excel in real time.
Excel.io delivers excellent importing and exporting functionality that is bound to save your teams a lot of time—and it’s free.
CloudExtend is similar to XL-Connector in that it opens up a wide range of Excel functionality for Salesforce data.
CloudExtend users can:
This is an extremely powerful set of features, giving companies access to a comprehensive data management tool at a price tag of $149 per user, per year.
Once you’ve pulled your data from Salesforce, CloudExtend makes filtering data exceptionally easy with a simple sidebar. There, you can filter your records down to those that you would like to update using rules. Then you can use advanced Excel functions to transform and manipulate the data as needed.
While CloudExtend does not support merging records like XL-Connector, it still delivers exceptional power and advanced features that simplify data management in Salesforce for teams that use Excel.
CloudExtend gets rave reviews, with a perfect 5/5 score on the AppExchange from thirty-nine reviews. The app has never received below a 4-out-of-5 review on the Salesforce marketplace.
Conga X-Author allows you to pull data from your Salesforce and manage that data in Excel. Conga X-Author places more focus on reporting than the other apps on this list. You can build advanced reports and analytics solutions in Excel using live Salesforce data.
One way in which Conga X-Author stands out is that it allows you to pull data from related lists and unrelated lists for standard or custom objects.
With Conga X-Author, you can:
Because of Conga X-Author’s flexibility, you can use it for nearly any data-related use case where a solution could conceivably be designed with Excel.
Field Dumper is a specialized Excel connector app for Salesforce that allows you to select custom or standard objects and extract all existing data to Excel. If you select multiple objects, the data will be available in multiple Excel worksheets, with field information shown as an individual row within the spreadsheet.
When you pull data from an object using Field Dumper, the app will include the following field-level information:
You can also identify other information and parameters that you would like Field Dumper to pull from your fields.
This is an ideal tool if you want to deep-dive into the data contained within a specific field. While Field Dumper does not offer the diverse feature set of some of the other apps on this list, it may be simpler and more straightforward for more specialized use cases.
One huge update is that Field Dumper is now completely free, and no longer has a paid tier. As soon as it is installed, you gain access to the full feature set with no limitations.
VyNDEX is an Excel connector app for Salesforce that allows you to integrate and pull data directly from Salesforce into Excel. Then you can:
While VyNDEX does not offer the ability to create new records, it is an excellent tool for bulk updates and reporting or analysis.
At $9.99 per user per month, VyNDEX is a cheaper option than other apps on this list, while still allowing you to connect and manipulate data in bulk, directly in Excel.
When you handle many of your Salesforce data management tasks in Excel, an Excel connector app can remove time-consuming export and import steps from your process. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t downsides to using these apps.
One primary consideration is API usage. Many apps on this list push updates to Salesforce using the API. You could quickly run through your API limit if you push a large update to your database. When you run out, you have to purchase new API tasks. Until you do so, operations that rely on API usage will not run, grinding many of your processes to a halt.
Additionally, Excel isn’t always excellent at handling massive datasets. When you try to open a worksheet with hundreds of thousands of records, Excel is likely to crash.
When using Excel to collaborate on data, even with Excel connector apps, you still need to practice careful versioning to ensure that everyone is working with the most recent update and do not overwrite recent updates that you have performed.
Further, Excel connector apps are only a good solution for experienced Excel data management veterans. Expecting a novice to use these apps for data maintenance can be problematic. They still need to know how to use advanced Excel functions to identify and fix issues within the data.
In some apps, the ability to preview information is not available. That means that you’ll need an in-depth process for analyzing the changes that you want to make before pushing the updates live. This can mean a different approach depending on the required workflow for each app.
While Salesforce Excel connector apps are incredibly useful tools for data management, Insycle delivers a complete solution that can replace many of these apps entirely, and will complement the rest.
Insycle helps you deal with:
First, Insycle’s Customer Data Health Assessment monitors your Salesforce data for common data errors, helping you to surface issues and taking you to a template that allows you to fix them with the click of a button.
Insycle’s Customer Data Health Assessment monitors your CRM database’s common data issues, generating a new report daily. You can click the Review button to be taken to the correct template to fix each issue.
Simple cleanups can go a long way toward making the data that you’ve collected usable. With Insycle, you can format and clean up names, or any text field in Salesforce, using a range of specially built functions for customer data management..
Insycle’s advanced functions make it easy to update, manipulate, and standardize data in any field in your Salesforce database.
With Insycle, you can deduplicate leads, contacts, or accounts in advanced ways, using any field in your Salesforce database as a matching field.
Insycle’s Merge Duplicates module gives you unparalleled control over how you identify and merge duplicate data in Salesforce.
You can also manage links between leads, contacts, accounts, organizations, and opportunities.
Match leads to accounts in bulk using any field in your Salesforce database.
And these templates can run on an automated, set schedule.
Insycle templates can be scheduled to run automatically, on a set schedule.
By automating your most important data management activities through Insycle, you’ll save your team's headaches while freeing their time to focus on activities that can grow your business.
Insycle is both a powerful alternative to and a natural pairing with Salesforce Excel connector apps, depending on your use case.
But Insycle isn’t just for the kinds of data tasks you’d do in Excel. It’s a complete data management tool helping companies analyze, understand, identify, fix, and collaborate on data issues across their organizations.
Insycle enables operations teams to fix CRM data quality issues in bulk and automate data maintenance processes. Without Insycle, the cost of bad data is a major blind spot for marketing and sales leaders and a roadblock for execution by their teams.
Do you need help bridging the gap between Salesforce and Microsoft Excel? Learn more about how Insycle can help you manage and maintain Salesforce data.