Many teams keep their most important things in an Excel file on OneDrive. Contracts, licences, inspections, subscriptions. The file does its job, but it never says anything back: when something expires, you only notice once it's too late. You can now link that Excel directly to OwndUp and actually put heads-ups on it, without moving your file.
Link it, don't retype it
You don't have to rebuild your Excel into an OwndUp list. You link the file that's already in your OneDrive, pick the right worksheet, and OwndUp mirrors the data read-only. Your Excel stays the source: you keep working in it the way you're used to, and those changes come along at the next sync.
The first time, Microsoft asks you once for permission so OwndUp may read your files. That permission is read-only: we write nothing back to your Excel and change nothing in it. If you unlink it later, the file stays exactly as it was.
Reminders that stay put
On the mirrored list you put reminders. You attach a heads-up to a date column and decide how many days in advance you want to be warned, for example 30 days before an expiry date. All open notifications come together on one page.
One thing matters here, and it's the clever part. Excel rows have no fixed identifier: if a row shifts because you insert or delete one above it, a naive link no longer knows which row was which. That's why, when linking, you pick a key column, for example a contract number or a customer name. OwndUp then recognises every row by its own value, and your reminder stays attached to the right line, even when the order in Excel changes.
Dates that are correct
A date in Excel is secretly a number, and especially with Dutch and international notations it easily goes wrong. That's why OwndUp reads date columns from their underlying value and converts them to a single, unambiguous format. Other columns we take over as they appear on screen, so amounts, leading zeros and codes stay exactly as you typed them.
What it's handy for
- Contracts and licences with a hard expiry date in Excel.
- Inspections and certificates that need to be renewed on time.
- Subscriptions that would otherwise roll over silently.
Good to know: it works with .xlsx files from OneDrive, and the link is read-only. Your Excel stays yours and stays the truth; OwndUp adds the heads-ups the file itself doesn't give.
Link the file once, pick your key column, set the reminder up right, and you'll be warned in time again, without changing a single thing in your Excel.