Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Unleashed

External Lists

An external list looks and acts just like a SharePoint list. Contents are displayed in rows and columns. You can also leverage the columns by sorting and filtering on them and by creating custom views. The main difference between an external list and a regular SharePoint list is that the actual contents of the external list live outside of SharePoint, hence the name.

To create an external list, complete the following steps:

1. In Internet Explorer, open the SharePoint site created earlier in the chapter. The URL will be something like http://mss2010.mydomain.com/sites/BCSSample/.
2. Select Site Actions and View All Site Content.
3. In the All Site Content page, click Create.
4. In the Create page, select External List, and click Create.