Excel Refresh - How it works?

[admiralman]

If I have an Excel file that uses Power Query to connect to an On Premise SQL Server in my OneDrive and I connect to the file using the Power BI service I know that I can use the On Prem Data Gateway to refresh the dataset within the PBI Service. However, the original Excel file itself is never refreshed. I wanted to confirm that this is expected behavior that only the Dataset is updated...not the actual file. Thanks in advance. 

[RMDNA · Accepted solution]

@admiralman,

Yes, that is expected behavior. When Power BI refreshes, it "refreshes" its connection to the datasource, so to speak, in order to pull in any changes to the source file. However, this won't actually trigger any action on the Excel file istelf.