Power Bi Dataset (my workspace online) does not appear on Get Data (Power Bi Desktop)

[Mirellou]

Hello all, 

I published an excel as dataset (Publish to Power Bi -> Export). It is now located in My Workspace. 

Then I opened an existing project on Power Bi Desktop. This project already has a dataset and I wanted to add one more.

I tried to get data -> Power Bi Datasets. 

All the other datasets appear in the list except of the one that I published from Excel. 

In order to understand the issue I started a new Power Bi project and there I could access this dataset. But when I tried to add another dataset, I can not!!! 

It seems that when you publish a dataset from excel, you can not combine this dataset with ny other one. 

All other options are greyed out. 

Could you please advise? 

Kind regards, 

Mirellou 

[AilsaTaoYe]

Hi @Mirellou 

When you connect to a data source with Live Connection mode , you cannot add more data sources , unless you change your connection mode to Direct Query .  Here is an official document on convert LC mode to DQ mode for your reference.

Using DirectQuery for datasets and Analysis Services (preview) - Power BI | Microsoft Docs 

Best Regards

[v-yetao1-msft]

Hi @Mirellou 

You mentioned that you published an excel as dataset (Publish to Power Bi -> Export) , do you upload data directly to Service on Excel to generate datasets, or do you connect to Service via Desktop and then publish the report to Service?

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Ailsa Tao

[Mirellou]

Hello @v-yetao1-msft , 

I published an excel from my desktop, but the file was on sharepoint not locally!

Publish is only available if I open the excel file on the app, it is not available if I open it on the browser.

Any idea? 

Thank you in advance!

Kind regards, 

Mirella

[v-yetao1-msft]

Hi @Mirellou

You confuse me a bit . Please correct me if I wrongly understood your problem . 

You created a report in Desktop via excel which is stored in SharePoint . Then you published the report to Service . Then you wanted through Get data to connect to the dataset which original data source is the excel file in Desktop , it worked ! You wanted to add one more , but failed . 

Similarly , if other dataset is added first , it is successful . Then add one more dataset which data source is excel , it will fail , right ?

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Ailsa Tao

[Mirellou]

Hello @v-yetao1-msft , 

Yes, that is exactly what happened. 

The reason I had to go through those steps is that when I tried to publish a project which had two data tables (one API and one excel), I get problems on refreshing on Power Bi Online version. The refresh is failing even if my excel is on sharepoint. My Api works just fine but excel table is part of my project. 

Therefore, I thought that if I publish the excel and then add it as a dataset, I will stop having issues with it. But unfortunately if you publish an excel as a dataset online, when you try to get data, it does not allow you to use any other datasource, except of only the excel.

And I need to have my project up and running on the online version, as soon as possible, so if there is a solution to my problem then please let me know. 

Thank you in Advance!

Mirella

[v-yetao1-msft]

Hi @Mirellou 

When you connect to a dataset , you can see the connection mode in the lower right corner of PBI Desktop is Live Connection . As we all know , if you connection mode is Live Connection , you cannot add other data source . In this case , PBI Desktop has introduced a new feature Using DirectQuery for Power BI datasets and Analysis Services (preview) , when you enable this feature , you can connect to multiple datasets at the same time . 

Using DirectQuery for datasets and Analysis Services (preview) - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Ailsa Tao