Can't refresh Power BI pivot table in Excel Online

[agneum]

When i open the excel workbook from Sharepoint, I get the error "External data source Failed We were unable to refresh one or more data connections in this workbook". I have used Pivot table referring to the power bi connection and set auto refresh when open the excel. It uses just one connection.

Opening it in desktop works just fine, but I need it to work in the online version. Why is this happening?

The only information I have found is this very old article:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/refreshing-data-in-a-workbook-in-a-browser-window-8956019...

But it has no mention of what the Sharepoint admin can do (and I think it is for on-prem only)

[mwegener]

Hi @agneum ,

you need to load the Excel file into Power BI via SharePoint or OneDrive for Business.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6822986449005232128-OFCX

[AlexisOlson]

I'm having this issue too.

According to Carlos Otero here: "the Excel for the web feature announced in this post (i.e. Power BI PivotTable refresh and interaction) is now fully rolled out" (as of 8/13/2021), so I'd expect it to be working by now.

[nbjdeunk]

It seems that this functionality is released for our en our customers tenants. 🙂

This works perfectly now for us.

[greenguy2012]

Bumping for visibility as I have the same issue. Any one found a solution?

[nbjdeunk]

I'm experiencing the same behaviour. Both using 'Analyse in Excel' en starting a blank workbook with a new connection to a PowerBI dataset will result in the same error.

This scenario is announced april 2021.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/power-bi-connected-pivottables-in-excel-for-the-we...

Untill this moment i'm getting the same error as topic starter. As the blog post states, this feature will 'roll out in the comming months'. So probably, we just have to wait?

"This new feature has started rolling out across Microsoft 365 tenants, and we expect full roll out over the next few months."

[lbendlin]

This sounds a bit different than "Analyze in Excel"  - have you considered using that instead?

[nbjdeunk]

Both options should work, according to the May update relaese notes.

I can't get it to work though (same error as topic starter).

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-may-2021-feature-summary/#excel_share_collaborate