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Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

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Avi Singh on 23 Jul 2015 08:43:23

Just the way we are able to upload a Power Pivot Model to SharePoint and then connect an Excel workbook to the model hosted on SharePoint (See http://www.powerpivotpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/SharePoint_PowerPivot_ToExcel.png) ...
...In a similar manner we should be able to connect Excel to a Data Model hosted on PowerBI.com.

Bonus Points: If users can also connect to a Power BI Desktop file (.pbix) using Excel. This would perhaps more for testing or ad-hoc use. Similar to how when building an SSAS Tabular Model in Visual Studio, you can click "Analyze in Excel" to open an Excel window connected to the model you are working on.


As an Excel user, I would love to use the cutting edge Data Modeling capabilities in Power BI Desktop (bi-directional relationships and new functionality rolled out each month).

However, while the new Power BI offers great visualization options, Excel gridheads like me, just NEED to be able to create Excel Pivots off of the Power BI Data Model.

If this could be enabled for Power BI, that would be very useful.
- Either by connecting to a Power BI Model (.pbix) hosted on PowerBI.com
(This would be similar to how I can create Excel Pivots connected to a PowerPivot Model uploaded to SharePoint)
AND/OR
- By connecting Excel directly to a .pbix file (like on your C: Drive)

Without this functionality Power BI feels like a **One Way Journey**. Once I go from Excel/PowerPivot to Power BI Desktop, the only visualization options are those on Power BI.

I may be looking at it from the wrong lens (still warming up to SaaS model of BI), but in my mind the "Data Model" should be agnostic of the visualization layer/tool. After building my data model, I should be able to connect any viz tool of my choice (pretty much). And that model already is in place for Power Pivot - by hostin your model on SharePoint or on SSAS Tabular server you can pretty much use the viz tool of your choice - Excel Charts/Pivots, Power View (within Excel or SharePoint), SSRS and other Microsoft and Non-Microsoft Viz tools.

Whereas with Power BI, I feel like I would be locked in to the visualization experience on PowerBI.com. The whole visuals project (https://www.github.com/Microsoft/PowerBI-visuals) is great but not for everybody. Plus, if I am using a specific viz tool, I want to be able to continue using that. For many users that tool is Excel :-)

Administrator on 28 Mar 2016 22:14:44

I'm very pleased to say this has been completed! Click the ... menu on a dataset in Power BI's navigation pane and you'll see an option to 'Analyze in Excel' which will open an ODC file that will build a Pivot Table in Excel. There are many ways we can keep improving this feature so please create more suggestions on the topic! Thanks!

Comments (62)
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Kristen Martel on 05 Jul 2020 22:17:47

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

This will be a big step in the direction of getting a SSAS like service in the Cloud. The Excel (Power Pivot) + Power BI combo is by far the best BI tool set out there (and will be for the foreseeable future)... add a full service out of the cloud (+ integration with Azure ML) and Tableau shares will halve again

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MK on 05 Jul 2020 22:17:44

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

Urgent!!!

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info on 05 Jul 2020 22:17:31

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

Absolutely important and necessary.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 22:17:20

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

This is the only upgrade I need to start using Power BI (i.e. connection to .pbix file). This is THE gate to mass adoption in Excel users all over the world.

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Esteban on 05 Jul 2020 22:17:18

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!

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GV on 05 Jul 2020 22:17:17

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

Is there any status on this ? Was somehow hoping that it would be available with the feb update...

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 22:17:04

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

This is one of the main concern for my clients to not move to the power BI Desktop yet.. please realese as soon as possible!

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Triadelphia on 05 Jul 2020 22:16:57

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

Is there any official status on this request? Losing access to Pivot Table functionality is THE reason I can't switch to primarily building models in Power BI Desktop. Just let us connect Excel 13 and 16 to a Power BI data model and I am completely in.

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Ken Wetherell on 05 Jul 2020 22:16:08

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

Yes, yes, yes. A million times, yes. Great work MS team. This is getting so awesome. With these requested import, export and portability options, this will be beyond awesome. It is THE necessary step to mass adoption and proliferation. Please make it so.

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Giampaolo Pitzalis on 05 Jul 2020 22:15:32

RE: Ability to connect Excel to Power BI Data Model and create Pivot/Charts

Please also consider the possibility to connect Onedrive published Excels using Enterprise Gateway datasources!