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Important
Publish to Power BI will be deprecated from Excel in Microsoft 365 starting August 19th, 2024, and Publish to Power BI will not be included in the Excel 2024 perpetual release. This doesn't impact prior versions of on-premises Office.
The following capabilities are deprecated and will no longer be available starting September 29th, 2023:
The following capabilities are deprecated and will no longer be available starting October 31, 2023:
After October 31, 2023:
If your organization uses these capabilities, see more details in Migrating your Excel workbooks.
With Microsoft Excel 2016 and later, you can publish your Excel workbooks directly to your Power BI workspace. In Power BI, you can create highly interactive reports and dashboards based on your workbook data. You can then share your insights with others in your organization.
When you publish a workbook to Power BI, there are few things to consider:
To publish your Excel workbook to Power BI, in Excel, select File > Publish and select either Upload or Export. The following screenshot shows the two options for how to get your workbook into Power BI:
If you select Upload, you can interact with the workbook just as you would in Excel Online. You can also pin selections from your workbook onto Power BI dashboards, and share your workbook or selected elements through Power BI.
If you select Export, you can export table data and its data model into a Power BI semantic model, and use the semantic model to create Power BI reports and dashboards.
When you select Publish, you can select the workspace to publish to. If your Excel file is on OneDrive for work or school, you can publish only to your My Workspace. If your Excel file is on a local drive, you can publish to My Workspace or to a shared workspace you can access.
Excel supports publishing local Excel files. Files don't need to be saved to OneDrive for work or school or to SharePoint Online.
Important
You can publish local files only if you're using Excel 2016 or later with a Microsoft 365 subscription. Excel 2016 standalone installations can publish to Power BI, but only when the workbook is saved to OneDrive for work or school or to SharePoint Online.
Once published, the workbook content you publish imports into Power BI, separate from the local file. If you want to update the file in Power BI, you must update the local file and publish the updated version again. Or, you can refresh the data by configuring scheduled refresh on the workbook or semantic model in Power BI.
When you publish from a standalone Excel installation, you must save the workbook to OneDrive for work or school. Select Save to Cloud and choose a location in OneDrive for work or school.
Once you save your workbook to OneDrive for work or school, when you select Publish, you can use the Upload or Export options to get your workbook into Power BI.
When you choose the Upload option, your workbook appears in Power BI just as it would in Excel Online. But unlike in Excel Online, you have options to let you pin elements from your worksheets to dashboards.
If you choose Upload, you can't edit your workbook in Power BI. If you need to change the data, you can select Edit, and then choose to edit your workbook in Excel Online or open it in Excel on your computer. Any changes you make are saved to the workbook on OneDrive for work or school.
When you choose Upload, no semantic model is created in Power BI. Your workbook appears in your workspace navigation pane under Reports. Workbooks uploaded to Power BI have an Excel icon that identifies them as uploaded Excel workbooks.
Choose the Upload option if you only have data in worksheets, or you have PivotTables and Charts you want to see in Power BI.
Using Upload from Publish to Power BI in Excel is a similar experience to using Upload > OneDrive for Business > Upload in Power BI, and then opening the file in Excel Online from Power BI in your browser.
When you choose the Export option, any supported data in tables and/or a data model are exported into a new semantic model in Power BI. You can continue editing your workbook. When you save your changes, they synchronize with the semantic model in Power BI, usually within about an hour. If you need more immediate updates, you can select Publish again from Excel to export your changes immediately. Any visualizations in reports and dashboards update too.
Choose the Export option if you used the Get & Transform data or Power Pivot features to load data into a data model.
Using Export is similar to using New > Upload a file > Excel > Import from Power BI in your browser.
When you choose either Upload or Export, Excel signs in to Power BI with your current account and publishes your workbook to your Power BI workspace. You can monitor the status bar in Excel to see publishing progress.
When publishing is complete, you can go to Power BI directly from Excel.
Events
31 Mar, 23 - 2 Apr, 23
The ultimate Power BI, Fabric, SQL, and AI community-led event. March 31 - April 2. Use code MSCUST for a $150 discount. Prices go up Feb 11th.
Register todayTraining
Module
Publish and share in Power BI - Training
Publish and share your Power BI reports and dashboards to teammates in your organization or to everyone on the web.
Certification
Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate - Certifications
Demonstrate methods and best practices that align with business and technical requirements for modeling, visualizing, and analyzing data with Microsoft Power BI.
Documentation
Reduce the size of an Excel workbook to view it in Power BI - Power BI
Learn about managing contents within a Microsoft Excel workbook, and how you can reduce the size of the workbook to view it in Power BI.
Get data from Power BI Desktop files - Power BI
Learn about different places to store Power BI files and how to get data and reports from Power BI Desktop into the Power BI service.
Get data from files for Power BI - Power BI
Learn how to get data from Excel, Power BI Desktop, and CSV files into Power BI.