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Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

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sreinman on 11 Dec 2015 01:10:56

At this point, only Excel workbooks with a power pivot data model can work in Power BI. It would be great to have the ability to upload Excel workbooks that are connected to our on-prem analysis services to be refreshable as well. The same way that the analysis services connector works for PowerBI reports, perhaps that connector can be extended to uploaded Excel workbooks as well.

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Arthur Clifford on 17 Dec 2023 09:55:07

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

From my perspective, what I want to do is enable workspace users to edit an excel workbook in Power BI service Excel Online or publish to Power BI from excel, and have the workbook be included as a data source in Power BI desktop or in general in reports.Right now, Excel Workbooks don't appear in one lake so it doesn't appear to be a data source even if it appears as a workbook for viewing in Power BI service. In PowerBI desktop there is no way to add a workbook from PowerBI as a dataset, which makes having the workbook in the service somewhat useless in terms of making reports. And that seems like an incomplete Excel Integration..

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Kamil Kozioł on 02 Feb 2023 15:56:56

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

Still no updates?

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JJ on 06 Jul 2020 00:15:05

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

planned since 2016 lol ;)

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JJ on 05 Jul 2020 23:27:09

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

please vote also here in Excel Online Uservoice https://excel.uservoice.com/forums/274580-excel-online/suggestions/33793252-pivottables-created-with-power-bi-using-analyze-in

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Alistair Brown on 05 Jul 2020 23:26:19

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

I see this has been planned since March 2016. Any update on this?

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Dane on 05 Jul 2020 23:19:49

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

I was surprised when this didn't work - I would have thought this would be the easiest migration path for people working with SSAS data to move from Excel to Power BI.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:17:43

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

Any progress on this ?

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Edward Miles on 05 Jul 2020 23:14:08

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

Any update? It's been planned for a while...

With the workbook section of a workspace it would be a great feature if I could connect a workbook to my Power BI model for those scenarios where Excel is the preferred client

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:01:49

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

'+1 absolut missing feature... "Analyse in Excel" is only the half story if you are not able to publish the excel file back to 0365 without "breaking" the refresh-ability

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Jonathan Åkerblom on 05 Jul 2020 23:00:51

RE: Add ability for Excel workbooks to have a live connection to SSAS

The business case I have for my organisation is to upgrade our Report Server with the PowerBI Report Server version, and to use this as a platform for all our reports. Be it SSRS reports, KPIs, PowerBI reports or Excel reports. I would be able to view all of these in one portal. As of today you have implemented this viewing functionality for PowerBI reports, but you still lack a simple way to view Excel reports. Our end users have to download the excel reports as static files from our report server, which only leads to excel hell. ->> If I could publish the excel reports (that all have SSAS connections) to PowerBI.com and then be able to interact with these excel workbook reports through the Report Server, the same way that I interact with regular PowerBI reports --- Then! I'd have a strong business case. But since this SSAS live connection thing doesn't work, I have zero use for the integration between SSRS, PowerBI and Excel.