Best way to import txt

[jrobinson1]

So, I'll start by saying that I'm not really qualified to be doing this work--but here I am.

What I'm trying to do seems like it should be simple, but I'm lost. I use an SEO Rank Tracker program to export ranking data for several websites. Data for each site is exported as a .txt file. In the past, we used Zapier and Navicat to import these .txt files into QuickBase--I'm pretty familiar with Zapier, less so with Navicat.

What I'm trying to do now is pull this data into BI automatically, or in as automated a way as possible. My .txt files are currently living in a SharePoint folder, and when there is a new export the previous file is overwritten (In the past we only exported the most recent recent results and those were added to the tables in QuickBase. We also have the capability to export historical data, which I feel like will probably work better for what I'm trying to accomplish.)

Now I can import the .txt file into BI Desktop and it looks great--but I need to access the data in BI for web and BI won't update with the .txt files. So I attempted to create an excel workbook that would connect to the data in the .txt files, but BI couldn't import the data because it wasn't in a table (which, I guess is not possible if the data is a live connection).

I'm banging my head against the wall and am pretty confused. Any suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

Thanks

[v-yuezhe-msft · Accepted solution]

@jrobinson1,

Could you please describe more details about "I need to access the data in BI for web and BI won't update with the .txt files"?

If you want to access the report in Power BI Service, after you create report in Power BI Desktop, you can publish your report to Power BI Service. And if you don't want to refresh the dataset in Power BI Service, don't set schedule refresh for the dataset and click "Refresh Now".

Regards,
Lydia

[jrobinson1]

Hi Lydia,

Thanks so much. I managed to resolve this--I was a bit confused on the connection between my files, Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service for the web. I've got it handled for now, although I may have more questions in the future.

Thanks,

Justin