You often find it necessary to take SharePoint lists offline (on your notebook), work on them including changes, deletions and addig rows, and then bring it back to the network and synchronize with SharePoint. In SharePoint V_2 (the 2003 version) it was possible to do this under certain circumstances with using Microsoft Excel 2003. Users migrating their SharePoint to V_3 (MOOS 2007) and Office 2007 are surprised to miss this functionallity.
Well you can still take a list offline to Excel 2007 and even update the data but only in one direction from SharePoint to Excel.
With the Office System 2007 you should rather use Microsoft Access 2007 if you want to modify your data offline.
To do so open the respective List/Library…
Use Open with Access from the Actions pull-down menu, enter the path to the Access file that will be created (or use default) and set that the list will be linked to the sharepoint site…
You can then work in Access in any way you want…
Even Attachments can be added, removed, viewed… (as long as you are online !)
When not having a network connection or when you use the work Offline option from the Connection pull-down located on the left lower corner of your Access window you can work offline as well. Most everything is working except functions like Attachments, they are only available when you are Online.
This option is perhaps not what many of us would have expected from the 2007 Office system but better than nothing ;-)…
Here a link from Microsoft on this function: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/HA101314701033.aspx
Here another link from Microsoft:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb462636(office.11).aspx
Does anybody have different or more experience on this isseu ?