Manual test cases created in Team Foundation Server 2010 can be easily edited from MS Excel. The TFS 2010 and Excel 2010 integration is native. I really liked this feature, though it comes with some shortfalls. Lets see what you can do and what you can not in more detail.
Edit/Add Test cases
To edit test cases, first create/open a query to return test cases that you wish to edit. I am going to work with a pre-built query that comes out of the box - my test cases.
Once you have the results of the query open, click on 
button located at the top of the result window. You will see other options along with an option “Open query in Microsoft Excel”. On selecting this option, it will open MS Excel with a table showing the results of the query. This is not “Export to excel”, this is viewing the results of the query in Excel which means any changes done to the fields can be synced back to the TFS database.
You can now makes changes to multiple test cases in a single go, you can edit almost any column contents. Similarly, you can add new test cases by inserting new rows and filling out the required columns with appropriate contents. You can choose “Choose columns” button to select more columns associated with TFS test case.
Once you are done making changes to the test case metadata, you can click on 
button. All your changes will be saved back to the TFS database instantly.
Advantages
I find this very helpful in following situations -
- You want to set/reset priorities of multiple test cases,
- You want to assign test cases to different testers,
- You want to change state of test cases and mark them ready for execution,
- You want to review test cases to find automation candidates and mark automation status as planned or automated,
- Close test cases for a feature that got dropped or for tests that are no longer applicable,
- Change area path or iteration,
- etc.
I’m sure there are more uses of this than above list,
Things you can not do
There are some important things you may wish to do from this excel view that you currently can not. I treat this more as a wishlist -
- Edit test steps. Yes, you can not edit test steps from excel. You have to do it from the test manager. You can not even do that from Visual Studio
- Execute test cases. You can not execute test cases from excel and mark them pass/fail/blocked. The only possible way to do that today is from the test manager.
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