Power BI

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Connect to Dataflows from Excel's Power Query

Vote (683)

Michael Shparber on 26 Apr 2019 19:12:38

Please allow the connection to Dataflows' entities from Excel's Power Query.
There are many cases when customers use Excel and not Power BI. But Dataflows can make the refresh process much faster for them.
Thanks

Comments (53)

Comments (53)

f3128011 3054-4452-86e0-4756f0ba3734 on 04 Sep 2020 14:19:28

RE: Connect to Dataflows from Excel's Power Query

This would be a great feature

cf408c0e 99cf-ea11-a812-000d3a579c34 on 04 Sep 2020 04:23:03

RE: Connect to Dataflows from Excel's Power Query

This would provide a great opportunity for single source of truth data for both Power BI and excel users.

534b35d0 6ac8-ea11-a812-000d3a9b112e on 25 Aug 2020 00:31:09

RE: Connect to Dataflows from Excel's Power Query

This idea represents the second half of the migration story for using Dataflows instead of Excel Power Query for data preparation. There is documentation here on how to migrate the data preparation to the service:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/dataflows/how-to-migrate-queries-from-power-query-desktop-to-dataflows

Unfortunately the documentation only shows you how to move away from Excel for the queries, but not how to consume the results when you still need them in Excel. A lot of heavy lifting or standardization can be done in the service, but a lot of users still need to consume the final result as Excel content.

A native connector would be ideal for keeping things simple for Excel users. Maybe it could work like the Dynamics 365 (current environment) when targeting the built in (transparent) ADLS gen2 capacity backing the workspaces. Anything that can abstract away the complexities of the underlying common data model folders would make it easier for the typical Excel business user to consume the final result.