A List in SharePoint is similar to a Table in Excel – it stores related information in rows and columns. The difference is that multiple users can simultaneously access and edit the List. There are limitations to SharePoint Lists – you can’t summarise the information with Pivot Tables or charts – and this is where Excel comes in.
This video shows how to export a SharePoint List to Excel and ensure that changes made to the List are synchronised back to Excel. In this example, which is based on a question I was recently asked, the user only wanted to export part of the List, so a filtered View must be created first in SharePoint.
The resulting Excel file can be stored locally, in The Cloud (for example in OneDrive or DropBox) or in a SharePoint Document Library.