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shanebo3239's avatar
shanebo3239
Helper I
9 years ago
Solved

Data from On-Demand Hosted XLS File

I have an issue that I've been beating my head against the wall for weeks with.  I have a vendor that has a web-hosted report that I need the data from.  The report itself isn't useful, but they have an "Export to Excel" feature for it.  The XLS file generated when I click that link always has the same name, but the data updates constantly.  So, if you close Excel and open it back up a few minutes later, you'll see new data.  Please note this report system is not on my personal network, but the vendor's, so using UNC paths or anything of that sort is out.

 

The issue I'm having is getting this data into Power BI automatically.  I have a URI to this spreadsheet (though, again it doesnt "exist" until something requests it).  When I try to use "Web" as my data source in PBI Desktop, I get "DataFormat.Error: External table is not in the expected format."  I've tried OData and a number of other methods to pull the data from the spreadsheet, but nada.

 

Can anyone help?

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    9 years ago

    That might be your problem then.  XLS isn't very well supported.  Can you get your vendor to export in either XLSX or CSV?

4 Replies

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable

    Is this an XLS file or an XLSX file?

      • Anonymous's avatar
        Anonymous
        Not applicable

        That might be your problem then.  XLS isn't very well supported.  Can you get your vendor to export in either XLSX or CSV?