Power BI Blog: Share and Collaborate in Excel for the web Connected to Power BI
27 May 2021
We thought we would bring you some news hot off the press this week. Microsoft has recently announced the initial availability of a connected PivotTable refresh in Excel for the web. This new capability makes it easier for organisations to share data and collaborate using Power BI and Excel. You can now explore, and refresh PivotTables connected to Power BI inside Excel for the web, and easily share these workbooks through OneDrive and SharePoint.
Combined with Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) sensitivity labels now fully integrated, you can control sharing to keep your data trusted and secure.
To create a PivotTable connected to Power BI, you must create a workbook using one of these following entry points:
- Download a connected workbook in the Power BI Service
- Connect to a Power BI dataset in Excel Desktop.
Download a connected workbook in the Power BI Service
In the Power BI service, open any report or dataset you have access to and use the ‘Analyze in Excel’ option to download an Excel workbook connected to the underlying dataset.
You then save the workbook in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online.
Connect to Power BI dataset in Excel Desktop
In the Excel Desktop Ribbon, connect to a Power BI dataset using either Insert -> PivotTable -> From Power BI or Data -> Get Data -> From Power BI.
You then save the workbook in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online.
To refresh the connected PivotTable in Excel for the web, you then have one of two options:
- directly in the browser
- share Excel workbooks in Power BI Apps.
Directly in the browser
The connected PivotTable can be refreshed by directly pasting the link to the workbook in your web browser. The link can be copied either by using the ‘Share’ button in the workbook or File -> Info -> Copy path. Users may now interact with the connected PivotTable in Excel for the web by dragging fields into the PivotTable area with the data staying connected to Power BI.
To ensure changes made to the workbook in Excel for the web, close any version of the workbook open in Excel Desktop.
Share Excel workbooks in Power BI Apps
Another way to deliver Excel data analysis and visualisation across your organisation is by including Excel workbooks in Power BI Apps. Now that data refresh is fully supported, the workbooks in Power BI apps will stay up to date.
However, it should be noted that Power BI datasets built upon live connections to Analysis Services are not currently refreshable in Excel for the web.
That’s it for this week!
In the meantime, please remember we offer training in Power BI which you can find out more about here. If you wish to catch up on past articles, you can find all of our past Power BI blogs here.
