Excel on Local Drive - Refresh

[Anonymous]

Am still a novice in PowerBi and currently evaluating it for a new company I work for. I have used it in a previous company and trying to recreate the same visualizations I did in my old job but running into one simple yet can't seem to figure it out issue. In the last company I used csv dumps from different SaaS vendors to update one file that sat in One Drive. That master xlsx file was connected to Power Bi so all I had to do each month is update the file and wait for the refresh to happen and Power Bi would then have the latest data from the set and update my reports. 

What's different here is that we do not have a license for One Drive but instead are a Google Shop. I have looked everywhere to see if there's an easy way to make the same connection using Google Drive but no cigar. So instead I created my master xlsx file and saved it to my desktop and created my first report. Now it's a new month and I have updated the xlxs file but can't seem to figure out a way to seemlessly replace that file in Power Bi and have it automatically update my reports using the updated file. The only option I see is to keep uploading the same xlxs, create a new datasource with the same name then recreating the report all over again which is time consuming and messy.

Please someone tell me there's a way out of my misery. 

Thanks

[TomMartens]

Hey,

not sure if I understand you correctly.

The easiest way is to  file placed on your desktop.

First Month

Create an xlsx file

Create a PBIX file using Power BI Desktop, connect to the XLSX as datasource.

Create your reports

Publish the Power BI report to the service

Following Months

Update the xlsx file

Refresh the data in the Power BI Desktop file

Re-Publish the Power BI file to the Service

Hopefully this provides you an idea to successfully use Power BI again 🙂

Regards,

Tom

[Anonymous]

Thank you for that explanation. I did just try it but getting a load error so nothing seems to be updating. I'll google the error and see if there's any help there. Now that I understand the process of going from PowerBi desktop to service it's actually a pretty good tool, just have to get passed the refresh hurdle. 

[v-juanli-msft]

Hi @Anonymous

Since you use power bi desktop to create reports with excel on local drive and publish it to service, to avoid refreshing manually, you could install a on-premise gateway, then add the excel to the gateway and configure schedule refresh for the dataset.

Reference:

install gateway

manage gateway

configure schedule refresh

Best Regards

Maggie