Embed an Excel file from the company’s SharePoint site into a Confluence page

[Sven-Nils_Kossow]

I have a question regarding Confluence.
We use Confluence here at our company.
At the moment, I’m having trouble linking or embedding a PowerPoint presentation or an Excel spreadsheet from an internal SharePoint site onto a Confluence page in such a way that the entire slide is displayed, rather than just a heading or something similar. Currently, I can only create a link to the Excel spreadsheet.
When I try to embed the whole file, I get a message saying that I don’t have the necessary permissions.
Do I need to ask our administrator to adjust the permissions for the SharePoint folder so that I can then display the file from that SharePoint folder on a Confluence page?
Is this an access rights issue between SharePoint and the Confluence page?
Does anyone have any ideas?

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

[Fazila Ashraf · Accepted solution]

Hi @Sven-Nils_Kossow 

The embed doesnt work seemless out of the box. There are commercial apps like https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1216789/onedrive-sharepoint-for-confluence that can help. 

As alternative, have you tried using confluence iframe macro and feed the iframe embed link of the sharepoint file to it?

[Sven-Nils_Kossow]

No, I haven’t tested the iframe macro.

[Mia Tamm _Simpleasyty_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Sven-Nils_Kossow ,

If you need the Excel file to remain connected to SharePoint, I think the SharePoint/OneDrive integration Fazila mentioned is probably the best approach. The permissions on the SharePoint side may also explain why embedding the whole file is currently failing.

If you don't actually need a live connection to SharePoint and mainly want to display and work with the Excel data inside Confluence, there are also apps that can import XLS/XLSX files and turn the data into a Confluence table.

For transparency, I work with the team behind Simple Tables, which is one option for this use case. It can import Excel files or use files attached to a Confluence page, but it wouldn't keep the data synchronized with the original SharePoint file.

So I think it really comes down to whether keeping SharePoint as the live source is a requirement.

[Kris Klima _K15t_]

Hi @Sven-Nils_Kossow 

As a general rule, you can embed content from private cloud sources in Confluence  (as a smart link or iframe) providing those sources are using the same authentication method. 

For example, if your Confluence (Atlassian organization) uses the same SAML SSO as the cloud storage (Sharepoint), it should work.

Having said that, cloud services often offer several ways of embedding content. Sometimes, just the URL will work. Sometimes, there's a dedicated embed link. There may also be a 'publish within your company' link.

I wrote a community article on the subject of embedding external content. It discusses Google Slides but I think you can extrapolate it and look around the Share Point options.

One more thing: with some services, I did experience a login window opening in the iframe - after entering my credentials, the content displayed as expected.

[Bibek_ikuTeam_]

Hi @Sven-Nils_Kossow ,

The permissions error you're seeing is expected: native Confluence linking doesn't carry SharePoint's permission model with it, so Confluence can't render the file inline the way it renders a native attachment. That's also why you only get a link rather than the full slide or sheet.

A couple of things worth checking first, free of any app:

• Whether Confluence and your SharePoint tenant are on the same SSO/auth (Kris's point above), since embedding sometimes needs the iframe/embed URL to negotiate that login itself.
• Whether the file's sharing settings in SharePoint allow "anyone in the org with the link" rather than being scoped to specific people, since a from-Confluence embed effectively views the file as a browser session.

If neither resolves it, a dedicated SharePoint connector app is the more reliable route since it handles permissions natively rather than through an iframe.

Disclaimer : I work at ikuTeam

Our SharePoint Connector for Confluence lets you embed, preview and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files from SharePoint directly on a page, full content, not just a link, and access follows SharePoint's own permissions rather than needing separate syncing.

The app actually gives you a choice on how that access is configured. With "Mirror Storage Permissions" turned on, each person's access in Confluence matches their individual SharePoint permissions exactly. With it turned off, the app uses a shared service account, so anyone who can see the embed in Confluence sees the file, regardless of their individual SharePoint access.

It's listed on the Atlassian Marketplace if you want to compare it with the other options mentioned in this thread: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1217864

You can always checkout 🧭 Guided Tour or Book a 📅Live Demo the  from the page.

Regards,

Bibek

[Danno]

@Sven-Nils_Kossow I have the add-on @Fazila Ashraf mentioned and it works great as long as your IT team knows what to do. In my case they keep booting me out of it even though we are still paying for the subscription.

That said, if you don't need the duplex editing/view feature of that tool, my latest workaround is to put the link to the document in your Confluence page and then use the Rovo AI tool to inspect/read it and then create the rest of the page using the text from the document.

I've not had to go back yet to have it update things from the original (I monitor documents I need to keep track of with Alerts) so that will also be a new adventure.