[Solved] Cannot import spreadsheet into SharePoint. This feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls

This SharePoint 2013 tutorial explains. how to resolve the error “Cannot import spreadsheet into SharePoint. This feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls ” which comes in SharePoint 2013/2016 or SharePoint Online.

The error “Cannot import spreadsheet into SharePoint” comes in both Internet Explorer (IE 11) and Google Chrome browser.

Cannot import Excel spreadsheet into Sharepoint Online

I have also uploaded a video tutorial on Cannot import Excel spreadsheet into Sharepoint Online error. Have a look and if you like our videos, Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Import Spreadsheet is a very useful template provided by Microsoft, by using which we can create a list from an excel spreadsheet. If you have an excel with a certain number of columns and data, the list can be generated simply by importing the spreadsheet. This way we can create a list without the default Title column. This will create the columns which were presented inside the spreadsheet.

Import Spreadsheet features rely on ActiveX. So the browser which you are trying should have ActiveX. Recently I was trying with chrome browser and it gave me an error like “Cannot import spreadsheet into SharePoint. this feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls” SharePoint chrome.

All the modern browsers do not support ActiveX like, below browsers does not support ActiveX:

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Microsoft Edge

The browser which supports ActiveX:

• Internet Explorer

You can also read an article on what browsers supports ActiveX here.

Sometimes if you are trying in Internet Explorer (IE 11), you might also get the error like this:

Cannot import spreadsheet into SharePoint. This feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls

If you get the error “this feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls” in SharePoint in chrome, then you can try in Internet Explorer (IE) browser. Microsoft recommendation is to use a 32-bit version of Internet Explorer 10 or 11 to import a spreadsheet in SharePoint 2013. I have tried to Upload Excel Data to SharePoint using Import Spreadsheet option in SharePoint 2013 in IE 11 and the error did not come.

If the error is coming in IE, then we can try to enable “SharePoint SpreadSheet Launcher” in internet explorer. Follow the below steps:
Open Internet Explorer then clicks on the Settings icon and then click on Manage Add-ons.

In the View and manage your internet explorer add-ons page, by default, it will not show all the add-ons. select “All add-ons” in the Show drop down.

Then search for “SharePoint SpreadSheet Launcher” add-on and click on Enable to enable the add-on.

After this restart the browser once and try again, the error “Cannot import spreadsheet into SharePoint. This feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls” will not appear.

Cannot import spreadsheet into SharePoint. This feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls

If the above solution will not work then you need to add the SharePoint site to trusted site.

To add a SharePoint Site as a trusted site, Open Internet Explorer, click on Settings icon -> Internet Options.

Then in the Internet Options dialog box, click on the Security tab.

Then in the Security tab click on Trusted Sites -> then click on Sites button which will open the Trusted sites dialog box. There put the SharePoint site URL.

Also, you can reduce the Security level to Medium-low.

Then close the browser and open it again and try now, you should not get Cannot import a spreadsheet into SharePoint. This feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls error.

This feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls

If the above solution did not work for you then you can change the document mode from Edge to 10 in IE 11.

To do so Open IE 11, Press F12 to open developer tools. Then change the document mode from Edge to 10.

Once you do this, IE 11 will reload the browser and now if you will try it should work fine. You should be able to import spreadsheet to SharePoint Online/2016/2016

How to import an Excel Spreadsheet to SharePoint

Once everything is fine you can now import an excel spreadsheet to SharePoint 2016/2013/Online.

I have written a step by step tutorial on how to import an excel spreadsheet into SharePoint.

You may like following SharePoint tutorials:

• The specified file is not a valid spreadsheet or contains no data to import SharePoint 2016
• [Solved] The list cannot be imported because a Microsoft SharePoint Foundation-compatible spreadsheet application is not installed or is not compatible with your browser
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• SharePoint Online Modern List: Explore 11 New Features
• How to create a SharePoint Survey
• Add multiple Office templates as a content type to a document library in SharePoint Online/2013/2016
• Create an App using Import Spreadsheet Option in SharePoint 2016
• Import Spreadsheet adding column name as column1 column 2 in SharePoint 2013

I hope this will be helpful to solve an error Cannot import spreadsheet into SharePoint. This feature requires a browser that supports ActiveX controls in SharePoint 2013/2016 or SharePoint Online.