Forum Discussion
Email a weekly Excel report
Hi Guys,
I have a report that is filtered by relative date (previous one week). This report contains over 3000 records.
The semantic model is refreshed every week as is the report.
I want to automatically send this report as an excel file weekly to some users but we don't have the Power Bi license to allow this (premium I believe).
I have heard there is a 1000 record limit. I have also heard using a paginated report.
Any tips on how I can achieve my goal?
Thanks
Hi jbrines
Given that you’re working with over 50 SharePoint lists as data sources and plan to use the data within Power BI for additional reporting needs, the most scalable and maintainable approach under your licensing constraints (without Power BI Premium) would be to centralize your data using Power BI Dataflows or a data warehouse (if available). Then, instead of trying to export directly from Power BI, you can use Power Automate to connect to those dataflows or directly to the SharePoint lists, filter for the past week's data, and write that into an Excel file using the “Create Excel file” and “Send email with attachment” actions. This approach bypasses Power BI's export limitations and still delivers the required Excel output on a scheduled basis. While paginated reports are the ideal solution for large exports from Power BI, they require Premium or Fabric capacity. Therefore, leveraging Power Automate to orchestrate data extraction and email delivery from SharePoint (or dataflows) is a practical, no-code workaround that fits within your existing Pro license, preserves the flexibility for Power BI reporting, and avoids the 1,000-row limitation of standard report exports.
8 Replies
Option 1: Excel + Power Query + Power Automate Desktop
- Connect Excel to Power BI dataset using Power Query.
- Apply relative date filter (last 7 days).
- Use Power Automate Desktop to refresh Excel & email weekly.
Option 2: Manual Export from Power BI Desktop
- After dataset refresh, open PBIX file.
- Export table/visual as Excel manually.
- Send via email manually or using Outlook rule.
Option 3: Paginated Report via Report Builder
- Design paginated report to handle full data.
- Export as Excel and email.
- Requires Premium or PPU license
- Ideal for large reports
Yes, you can use Excel to connect directly to your Power BI semantic model
Hi jbrines
You're trying to automatically send a Power BI report filtered to the previous one week (with over 3,000 records) as an Excel file to users on a weekly schedule, but you're constrained by licensing—specifically, you don’t have Power BI Premium, which is typically required for features like subscriptions with file attachments and paginated reports. You're correct that exporting large tables from standard Power BI reports (e.g., via subscriptions or export to Excel/PDF) has a 1,000-row limit in the Power BI Service for visuals when not using Premium or a paginated report. A common workaround is to use Power BI Report Builder to create a paginated report, which doesn’t have this row limit and is specifically designed for scenarios like exporting large tables to Excel. However, even paginated reports require a Premium capacity (or at least a Fabric capacity with Report Builder support) to be published and scheduled in the Power BI Service.
If Premium isn’t an option, you can consider building a Power Automate flow that connects directly to the data source (such as SQL Server, SharePoint, or a dataflow), retrieves the last week’s records, and writes them into an Excel file, which can then be emailed automatically. This method bypasses Power BI altogether and is more flexible under licensing constraints. Another low-code alternative is to create a scheduled PowerShell script or Python script using the Power BI REST API (or direct data source connection) to fetch data and export to Excel via tools like pandas or xlsxwriter, then email it via SMTP or a connected service. These options require some setup but can fulfill your goal without needing Premium.
Hi Poojara_D12
I have over 50 Sharepoint lists I am pulling the data from, also we will be using the data on Power Bi for other needs..
Hi jbrines
Given that you’re working with over 50 SharePoint lists as data sources and plan to use the data within Power BI for additional reporting needs, the most scalable and maintainable approach under your licensing constraints (without Power BI Premium) would be to centralize your data using Power BI Dataflows or a data warehouse (if available). Then, instead of trying to export directly from Power BI, you can use Power Automate to connect to those dataflows or directly to the SharePoint lists, filter for the past week's data, and write that into an Excel file using the “Create Excel file” and “Send email with attachment” actions. This approach bypasses Power BI's export limitations and still delivers the required Excel output on a scheduled basis. While paginated reports are the ideal solution for large exports from Power BI, they require Premium or Fabric capacity. Therefore, leveraging Power Automate to orchestrate data extraction and email delivery from SharePoint (or dataflows) is a practical, no-code workaround that fits within your existing Pro license, preserves the flexibility for Power BI reporting, and avoids the 1,000-row limitation of standard report exports.
Hi jbrines
Could you please confirm if your query have been resolved the solution provided by BhavinVyas3003 and Poojara_D12 ? If they have, kindly mark the helpful response and accept it as the solution. This will assist other community members in resolving similar issues more efficiently.
Thank you
