Error: Couldn't Open the Workbook

[mkeisha]

We created a 72 MB PowerPivot model with lots of Slicers, Pivot Tables and charts in Excel 2013 that we would like to share within the PowerBI service. So we saved the workbook in One Drive for Business and uploaded to the PowerBI service via Get Data, Files, One Drive for Business, Connect, Connect, Manage & View Excel in Power BI.  The workbook seemed to load successfully as a report.  But as soon as we clicked on the report, we received an error message as follows:

"Couldn't Open the Workbook.  Sorry, we can't open your workbook in Excel Online because it exceeds the file size limit.  You'll need to open this in Excel."

What's going on here.  Are we out of luck?

Thank you.

[austinsense]

The limit for viewing an Excel report like that online is 10MB - that's the option you choose.

The other option "Import Excel Data into Power BI' has a 250MB limit (soon to be raised).  This second option brings in the whole data model and allows you to build PBI reports.

[mkeisha]

Thank you for your response.  But what doesn't make sense is that we have other similiar files that are approximatly 65-68 MB that work fine.  (Again, created in PowerPivot originally and loaded into PowerBI service the exact same way.)  I'm wondering if our issue is related to the file size limitation for the "Excel" component (slicers, pivot tables, graphs) as opposed to the "model" piece. (tables, DAX measures, etc.)

What do you think?

[austinsense]

I see you're trying to be anonymous 🙂 You might be right about the file size thing - I'd have to see you do it both ways to understand what was happening.