Data Source Changing When Recreating Report/Dashboard

[gmecwm]

I just built a report & dashboard for this company I'm working for, and my data source was an Excel file on my computer drive. Now that it's finished, I'd like to transfer ownership to my boss. As I've learned from other posts, this can't exactly be done, so I'm using my boss's credentials to essentially recreate the report under his account. The issue I'm concerned about is the fact that the Excel file is still on my computer. If I create the report in his account then send the Excel file to him and he tries to upload the data to update the report, is PowerBI going to be able to do that???

[v-yulgu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @gmecwm,

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If I create the report in his account then send the Excel file to him and he tries to upload the data to update the report, is PowerBI going to be able to do that???

Yes. That way, the published report on service is owned by your boss.

But, one thing should be pay attention to is that if your boss just need to view this report on service, without need to refresh data source, there is no matter whether you send the Excel file to him or not since you have imported the Excel data into .pbix file. Anyone who gets this .pbix file can open and read this report on his computer. For refresh, it would fail, although you send the Excel file to him. As the data source location has been changed while the path in Power Query wasn't. You may need to ask your boss to change the file path under Advanced Editor after receiving the .pbix file and excel file.

Alternatively, to avoid above step, you can upload the Excel file to your boss's Onedrive. Then, get data from Onedrive to create report, still with your boss's credential.

Reference: Use OneDrive for Business links in Power BI Desktop

Getting OneDrive Files into Power BI Desktop

Best regards,

Yuliana Gu

[gmecwm]

Thank you so much! This worked perfectly! (: