Forum Discussion

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
7 years ago

Excel on Local Drive - Refresh

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 runn...
Need Help
TomMartens's avatar
TomMartens
Super User
7 years ago

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's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    7 years ago

    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's avatar
      v-juanli-msft
      Community Support
      7 years ago

      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