Connecting to Excel Data
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This post is about connecting to data in an Excel worksheet.
This post was made with the November 2023 version of Power BI desktop. While Microsoft updates Power BI Desktop every month, the way it connects to data almost never changes, but if it does, I’ll update this video and write-up.
We’ll just be learning the basics of connecting to an Excel file in this tutorial. We’ll have other posts about connecting to other types of data sources.
We’ll be connecting a super simple Excel spreadsheet in this post. If you’ve like to try it out with the same file, you can download a copy of it here:
Here’s the Video version of this post.
Connecting Power BI Desktop to an Excel file is super easy.
From the canvas, you can click either the green “Import data from Excel” button that is on the canvas when a report doesn’t have data connected to it yet.
Or, you can click the “Excel workbook” button in the Data section of the Home Ribbon.
Or you can click “Get Data” in the Home Ribbon and navigate to the Excel Workbook option, then click “Connect”.
Doing any of the above three options will open up a file navigator window, where you navigate to your Excel file, select it and click “Open”.
You’ll then get a Power BI Navigator window that will give you a list of tabs in your Excel file. Select one to get a preview of the data. Check a checkbox to activate the “Load” button at the bottom. Click “Load”.
Power BI then works for a bit (the more data you have, the longer this will take, but it’s usually just 5-10 seconds with small datasets).
Once it’s loaded, you can see your data in the Data Pane, and also in the Table and Model views of your report.
If you need help finding your Data Pane, the Table View, or the Model View, check out our Intro to the User Interface Post.
Let me know in the comments below if you have a question about connecting Excel data to Power BI Desktop.