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Anonymous
Not applicable

Converting Excel Template to Power BI Report Template

Greetings,

 

We currently have excel templates made up of multiple tabs, some of which have pivot tables on them.  The source of the pivot tables are tables populated on other tabs within the same workbook.  These data tables are refreshed with VBA making Oracle stored procedure calls.  Is it possible to upload the the tabs from the given template into Power BI but then make some changes so that Power BI makes the procedure calls to populate the tables and fill in the associated Pivot tables?  Do the pivot tables in question need to be done in Power BI from scratch?  

 

If the pivot tables need to be done from scratch, the next question is can the following pivot table layout be replicated in Power BI?  As you can see, the first column has multiple fields in outline form (stepped out) with idents, then the rest are in tabular form.  I have been searching for answers to all of these questions for a couple of days now and cannot find definitive answers:

Header HeaderHeaderHeaderHeaderHeader
XXXX      
  XXXXXX      
    XXXXXXXX      
      XXXXXXXXXXX      
        XXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXXX    
   XXXXXXX123(blank)(blank)
Grand Total      
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Seems possible.

 

AlexisOlson_0-1635463908801.png

 

View solution in original post

8 REPLIES 8
AlexisOlson
Super User
Super User

I'm not aware of any conversion tools. I'd guess you'd basically have to rebuild things.

 

As far as the format, here's an example of some easily possible layouts that I've mocked up:

AlexisOlson_0-1635456192796.png

Sum, Count, Max, and Min are measures and the rest are dimensions.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Thank you for your prompt attention to this.  Regarding your example formatting, in the case of my example, I don't have values to aggregate in each of the additional header columns.  There will be aggregated values but not all of them will be.  Where you see X's  and (blank)'s are text.  So, the first 5 fields are "stepped out" (to use Power BI terminology) but the additional fields are not.  Do you know if this can this be replicated and, if so, how?

I think you'll have to show me an example or link to a sample Excel file where you have done this. I can't quite picture it just from your description.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Here's a screen shot of what I tried to put in my original post but it removed my formatting when I just copied and pasted the table itself.  Does this help?

JGCPQ_0-1635457328927.png

 

This is pretty much the same as your original post.

 

I meant something more like an example where you show some sample data in its table form and in the pivot table form. Preferably something with distinguishable column names and values. It doesn't have to be real data, but multiple dimensions named "X" and "Header" give me very few context clues to work with.

Anonymous
Not applicable

Sorry.  How's this?  One record in the table, the pivot table populated, and you get a glimpse of the fields added to the row labels:

JGCPQ_0-1635459275188.png

 

Seems possible.

 

AlexisOlson_0-1635463908801.png

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

Okay.  I read your mind (or vice versa).  The only thing I could think of was doing calculated fields to pull the text in order to get the layout I was looking for.  Thanks for sharing.  I will look further into doing it that way.  My boss may not care for that approach but, it might be our only option besides redesigning the report(s) for Power BI usage.

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