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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
5 years ago

Connecting to Excel Files: SharePoint Folder vs Local Connection (C:) with On-Premise Gateway

Does anybody have any recommendations for the best way to import Excel Files to Power BI Desktop?   Currently, my PBIX file is connected to about 25 Excel files that are locally stored on the C: dr...
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selimovd's avatar
selimovd
Most Valuable Professional
5 years ago

Hey Anonymous ,

 

I agree with Matt, the performance to Sharepoint is not good.

How fast do the files change? And how many times per day do you want them to be loaded?

 

If you just refresh a few times per day, I would store them in Sharepoint and load them with dataflows. Like this you don't really mind if it's slow, because it's loaded anyway in the Power BI Service. And the connection to the loaded table of the data flow is super fast. And you won't need the VM with gateway as everything is in the cloud.

 

See also the documentation:

Introduction to dataflows and self-service data prep - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

 

If you need any help please let me know.
If I answered your question I would be happy if you could mark my post as a solution ✔️ and give it a thumbs up 👍
 
Best regards
Denis
 
  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    5 years ago

    Files are changing very frequently. Most of the 25 update 12 times per day each during working hours.

    I also have them set to refresh 8 times per day, per the maximum on a Pro account.

     

    I'm not too concerned with the refresh speed, my main concern is the speed of the PBIX file when I try to edit queries, but it seems like a local connection is the fastest option for this, correct?