There Is Now An Undefined Limit To The Number Of Rows That Can Be Imported From Excel

[dmoffat]

There is a web page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-import-excel-workbooks that says in it that:

"There is currently no limitation on the size or number of objects in the workbook, but larger workbooks take longer for Power BI Desktop to analyze and import."

I guess that "currently" has passed because apparently now there IS an undefined limitation that seem to be quite restrictive (I have tried 90k records in a table to no avail).  Please don't tell me that you shouldn't be using Excel as a source for PBID.

Can someone tell me WHY this was imposed, what that limit is and are they planning on a similar arbitrary limitation of the PBI Service any time in the future?

[v-lili6-msft]

hi, @dmoffat

    After my test, I also have the issue, I have reported the situation to the product department, If there is a reply, I will update it right here.

Best Regards,

Lin

[edhans]

That page is about importing an Excel file into Power BI Desktop - File|Import|Excel Workbook Contents.

As far as row count if you use an Excel file as a source in Get Data, I just loaded a 18MB 500,000 row Excel table from an Excel file on my OneDrive account into the Data Model of Power BI Desktop 64 bit in about 15 seconds.

Is it possible you are using a 32bit version? That has a 2GB memory limit, which is not the size of the file, but how the data is loaded after expanded into the data model. I've seen 32bit versions go wonky much sooner than I'd have expected with data sets I didn't think approached 2GB of space. I've quit even trying to use 32 bit version of PBI Desktop or Excel.