Forum Discussion
Possible to create a Table Visual through which users can modify excel source data?
I am hoping to set up a table visual where users can use a pulldown list to update a "status" column directly in Power BI service instead of going to the source excel. This would simplify the workflow for the 100+ users in my org who currently co-author the excel sheet that feeds into Power BI as-well-as prevent users from unhiding columns in the source excel that great reduces readability.
Thought this would be a fairly common use case (because it's not a pivot table) but unable to find anything on this. Perhaps Power BI is always read-only? Thank you in advance for your help!
Hi botayone
Yes, in most cases Power BI is read-only, and does not provide write-back to update data. You can do this in Power BI with a Directly connected datasource, and tools like PowerApps Business Apps | Microsoft Power Apps which lets you build data-entry screens that can be incorporated into Power BI reports. Or you can use a third-party solution like PowerOnBi Add Write-Back Functionality to Power BI with Power ON Visual Planner (poweronbi.com)
Hope this helps
Stuart
2 Replies
Hi botayone
Yes, in most cases Power BI is read-only, and does not provide write-back to update data. You can do this in Power BI with a Directly connected datasource, and tools like PowerApps Business Apps | Microsoft Power Apps which lets you build data-entry screens that can be incorporated into Power BI reports. Or you can use a third-party solution like PowerOnBi Add Write-Back Functionality to Power BI with Power ON Visual Planner (poweronbi.com)
Hope this helps
Stuart
Thank you for the confirmation, Stuart!
I will look into PowerApps but suspect that the data-entry screens will not be as user friendly as excels, where users currently filter on their name in the action owner column and then select the status column from a pull-down list.
Would be quite cool if this were the Power BI development roadmap.
