Connect PowerBI to Shared Folder for Free

[beccalkelley]

Hey everyone,

I am making a Power BI report for my small company. I need to connect this report to a shared folder that 6 employees can put excel files in. It must connect to the folder, not an individual file. I have seen a lot of forums suggest SharePoint, but SharePoint would cost $30/mo (6 users), which doesn't feel reasonable for the scope of this project. I'm open to storing the data in OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drives, or anything free really...I keep seeing things that say OneDrive will work, but when I paste the link in, I get an immediate error. There has to be a workaround here... has anyone come up with a solution?

[DaleT]

Hi,

Do you have an on-premises environment? If any, you can create a local folder and share it to the 6 users. The Power BI will consume the local folder and the Power BI Service will refresh through the data gateway. No extra costs are needed.

Best Regards,

Dale

[Omid_Motamedise]

Check this video for conecting into one drive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6hJHceheng

[beccalkelley]

Hey! Thanks for your response! This video shows how to connect to a file, but I need to connect to a folder with many files inside...

[zenisekd]

Have you tried this work around? you have to remove the ending of the HTML address. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyeyDvOgLsw&ab_channel=PragmaticWorks
I don't have one drive atm, but I think it should work. If you also remove the xlxs address, it should navigate you first to the folder and then you can expand the files. 

[beccalkelley]

Thank you for responding! I just tried this method and, in the video, it does not ask him for authentication, but it does ask me. None of the methods (basic, api, organizational account, etc) work for me...