Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations has several convenient ways to view, edit, and publish data. For example, there is a helpful feature that opens information in Excel, which uses some out-of-the-box Excel templates.
If the standard Excel template does not meet your requirements, then the template can easily be modified. Note that it is best practice to keep the standard template untouched and create a separate entry template for your exact use case.
The standard Excel templates can be accessed from Organization Administration → Setup → Office → Integration → Document Templates. There is a download option to access the actual template file.
In this article, we will make some modifications for General Ledger Journal, since the out-of-the-box template only shows the Main Account value, rather than the entire financial dimensions.
If we just want to show the dimensions as they are seen on the D365 user interface (UI), then we need to remove the Main Account column and add the Financial Dimension column as it is in the UI.
Here is the screenshot for the issue: When you open the dataset in Excel, it does not show the entire financial dimension.
Note: You can also use the Visual Studio → Dynamics365 → Addins → Add financial dimensions to Odata option to separate the financial dimensions into different columns; however, keep in mind that if this is done, the additional columns need to be added and re-arranged in the template. but the user may not want that since they have to do extra steps to add these new columns to spreadsheet and rearrange the columns. Get more details about the process of adding dimensions to excel templates this here.
How to customize the General Ledger Journal
1. Open the standard Excel template and make modifications.
In our example, for the General Ledger Journal Excel template (LedgerJournalLineEntryTemplate), the dimension column in D365FO only shows the Main Account in the Excel template. We will download and modify the template and save it to a local path. Here's how this is done:
- Go to Organization administration→ Setup→ Office integration→ Document templates, find the LedgerJournalLineEntryTemplate and download it
- In the Microsoft Dynamics Office Add-in, click the Design button
- Select to edit LedgerJournalLine data source
- In the selected fields grid, remove Account.AccountValue - Main account.Main account.
- In the Available fields grid, select AccountDisplayValue - Account.
- Click update
- Save the modified version to a local path.
2. In Visual Studio, create a new project and add a Resource to the project
Point the Resource to the new saved Excel file in the local path.
3. Create a new class to extend DocuTemplateRegistrationBase class and implement LedgerIJournalExcelTemplate.
The DocuTemplateRegistrationBase class will look through all the child classes to populate the Document templates in D365FO. The LedgerIJournalExcelTemplate is in the interface that has the framework.
Copy all the logics from LedgerDailyJournalExcelTemplate class. This is the class for the standard General Ledger Journal Entry template. We just need to change the template name and label, as shown below:
4. Build the project.
5. Reload system templates
Go to D365FO→ Organization administration→ Setup→ Office integration→ Document templates. Click "Reload system templates". You will see the new template is added to the list.
6. Test your new ledger
To test, go to General Ledger -> Journal entries -> General journals -> Open lines in Excel. You can see the new template entry is added.
When opened in Excel, the new Account column is showing the entire financial dimension now.
This straightforward process has not changed much itself, but there have been a lot of updates to Visual Studio and D365 since this original article was released. For example, Visual Studio 2026 offers AI enhancements, like inline Copilot code suggestions, performance-aware Profiler Agents, automated documentation, and more to speed up development and troubleshooting when customizing Excel templates and OData entities. If you’d like help leveraging and understanding these features (or any other in D365 and the Microsoft ecosystem), reach out to our experts to start the discussion today.
