Remove the limitation: "Power BI (web service) only supports importing or connecting to workbooks created in Excel 2007 and later. Workbooks must be saved as .xlsx or .xlsm file type." Thousands (millions?) of .xls files are published to web sites in various "open data" efforts. These can be read by Power BI Desktop, but not by the Power BI web service, making it awkward to refresh.
11 Comments
- There's more discussion of this issue here, including examples of public websites with .xls files: http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Dataset-Refresh-error-Microsoft-ACE-OLEDB-12-0-provider-is-not/m-p/47489
- This one is vital for us as we deal with a lot of xls files on the ABS web site.
- Same here, lots of legacy xls files are being used and not having the ability to autorefresh makes PBI obsolete.
- This one is now two years old and should be an easy fix. Please MS have a look at this.
- it's 2018 Oct, and this idea is yet to be deliver..
- Please also include support for xlsb files as well. Many people use these because they support both macros and are substantially smaller than a comparable xlsm or xlsx file.
- I couldn't connect to an xlsb file with PBI Desktop due to this error. Seems strange that there are dozens of file type PBI can connect to but not an xlsb.
- There are lots of companies out there that still gets lots of data in legacy Excel XLS format. It does not make sense that Power BI Service does not support this format.
- I believe I fixed this problem! Use the data gateway to refresh this source. 1. Install a data gateway 2. Add the XLS data source to the data gateway 3. Check the box to Allow user's cloud data sources to refresh through this gateway cluster. These cloud data sources do not need to be configured under this gateway cluster. 4. Set the data source to refresh through the gateway 5. Refresh your dataset
Please Microsoft, let us use your old Excel file format!! This makes scheduled refreshes impossible from our database exports...
