Personal Use of Power BI

[nehaljain]

Hi --

I have created an power bi account and it ends in "onmicrosoft.com". The account got created as I was playing around with various combinations of hotmail, gmail, my work and random email addresses. Like Google Data Studio, What I really wanted was

1) Ability to have my own power bi account linked with my hotmail.com email address

2) Ability to use my one drive excel spreadsheet as data sources for power bi dashboards and reports.

3) Ability to refresh reports and dashboards as data changes in one drive files

4) Share my work with my friends and colleuge on their personal email addresses (gmail, hotmail, yahoo) etc.

I am not sure if this is available in power bi.

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@nehaljain,

Firstly, you can set alternative email address for Power BI account, but the alternative email address should be also a work or school accoount.

Secondly, you can directly connect to your Excel file in Power BI Service and refresh the dataset using OneDrive refresh, for more details, please review this  article.

Thirdly, it is possible to directly share your dashboard to personal email address. See https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/share-your-power-bi-content-with-anyone-by-email-2/.

Regards,
Lydia

[ghyut1]

"but the alternative email address should be also a work or school accoount." Why should it? I am simply trying to use Power BI for home use, why is microsoft making it intentionally difficult? 

[Anonymous]

The way it is setup is really unfortunate, and ridiculous. I certainly hope they rethink the business model and allow individuals to use this tool at an individual (not school or work).

[zoloturu]

Hi @nehaljain,

Did you checked articles provided by @v-yuezhe-msft?

Do you have any questions?

Regards,

Ruslan