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jfchartier's avatar
jfchartier
Frequent Visitor
7 years ago

Import Power BI Dataset or Dataflow table into Excel data model

Is it possible to import a Power BI Dataset or Dataflow table into an Excel data model? I've looked at using the Web.Content function with the Power BI REST API, but I keep running into an "Access to...
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v-juanli-msft's avatar
v-juanli-msft
Community Support
7 years ago

Hi jfchartier 

Based on my experience, connect to Power BI in excel is possible.

Thanks to contributors, You could refer to the following articles.

  • In the Power BI Service:
    Analyzing in Excel, described in the official documentation.
  • From Power BI Desktop:
    Export to csv or txt files using R-script. Read article here (only in German available).
    Export to an SQL database using an R script. Read article here.
    use Excel functions, 

        Import data from a Power BI Desktop file into Excel

As for connecting to Power BI dataflow directly, i find no articles saying this.

You could firstly connect to Power BI dataflow with Power bi desktop, then try methods above.

 

Best Regards
Maggie

 

Community Support Team _ Maggie Li
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

  • jfchartier's avatar
    jfchartier
    Frequent Visitor
    7 years ago

    Hi v-juanli-msft,

    Thank you for all of your suggestions. It's nice that there are so many ways to get data in and out of Power BI/Excel. What I'm really looking for is a direct way to pull data from the Power BI Service into an Excel data model. I would like to be able to click Refresh Data in Excel and pull the latest data from a dataset/dataflow without any intermediate steps. The Analyze in Excel option gets close, but as far as I can tell, it only allows access to the data through PivotTables, which unfortunately don't seem to be accessable through Power Query. I know that I can create the PivotTable and then create a data table that references that PivotTable and then pull that data table in through Power Query, but that means I have to keep two copies of my data directly in Excel and it's a bit slow. It also appears that if we had set up data storage for our Power BI tenant I may be able to set up my dataflow to store on Azure Data Lake, which I think I could query, but it looks like that feature is still in preview and I'm not ready to try to push that through yet.

    • bajimmy1983's avatar
      bajimmy1983
      Advocate V
      7 years ago

      Hi jfchartier ,

       

      Today I started looking for the same approach and ended up here and it seems there isn't a solution yet. :(

    • RakeshSinghr's avatar
      RakeshSinghr
      Resolver I
      6 years ago

      Is any of these features being worked on for future releases:

       

      - Connect Excel directly to Power BI Dataflows to build excel models

      - Connect to Power BI Dataset as table ( not as pivot table)

       

      there used to be a excel publisher download from power bi service which provides a ribbon within excel.

      Is that been dicontinued? Is the only way to connect to Power BI Dataset is to download the odc file and use it to create a pivot table?