How do I create Workstreams from Excel spreadsheet or Word table imports?

With Lupl, there's no need to rebuild your existing trackers from scratch. Simply import them into your Lupl matters, and pick up where you left off.

Lupl offers the ability to import Workstreams from existing Excel spreadsheets or Word tables – usually documents that teams previously used to track and manage work across their legal matters.

Steps to import from Excel or Word:

1. Navigate to your Lupl matter.
   
   
2. Beside the Workstreams menu, click the "+" button to add a new Workstream.
   
3. In the Workstream creation menu, select the "Import" option from the left hand side.
   
4. In the following menu, choose where you wish to import from.
   If you have SharePoint/OneDrive integrated into your desktop, you can also import from these sources using "My Computer".
   
5. Select the desired Word document / Excel sheet using your system's file picker.
   
6. Once you've selected the right document, click "Import".
   
7. In the next screen, once the document has been loaded into Lupl, you'll need to select your headers:
   
8. In the next section, you'll need to specify your column types:
   
   To create Task workstreams, please ensure Task Name, Assignee, and Due Date columns are present.
   
9. For the final step, you'll need to name your new Workstream and specify the desired date format:
   
   Once you're done, click "Import".
10. Your new Workstream will be available for use within your Lupl matter.
    You can customize the columns (e.g. picking colors for single select options) and start adding in Assignees and Linked Documents as required.

Best Practices and Limitations for importing tables from Excel or Word:

Creating Task Workstreams from Excel/Word imports:

To create Task workstreams from your imports:

• Ensure the first column is set to "Task Name".
• Ensure that there are columns for Assignee and Due Date.

Without these three critical columns, your Workstream will not support Task-based functionality, nor will these items appear in your global Task view.

Limitations for Excel workbooks with multiple worksheets, or Word documents with multiple tables:

Please note that Lupl can only import the first Excel worksheet in a workbook, and the first table in a Word document that contains more than one.

We advise separating each table into separate documents for importing into Lupl as separate Workstreams.

Supported file formats for import:

We support the following file formats for import:

• Word: DOC, DOCX
• Excel: XLS, XLSX

We do not support CSVs or Macro-enabled documents (DOCM, XLSM).

Other limitations to account for: 

• If you have created additional columns for individual steps (or subtasks), these will need to be specified manually from within Lupl following the import
• Assignees and Linked Documents will also need to be specified manually once the import is complete. We recommend setting these columns to plain text at the column selector stage
• Lupl does not support importing embedded images within table / worksheet cells.
• We do not recommend using Lupl for formula-based sheets such as cap-tables, or any other tracker that relies heavily on mathematical calculations.
• We suggest maintaining separate Excel sheets for trackers that depend on formulae or mathematical calculations, and linking them to Lupl from your DMS.