Power BI Data Store location

[vlcc]

Hello everyone,

I am new to Power BI. I have learned couple of things that Power BI is capable of doing. I found one thing that I could not figure out the answer. By the time we get data from a particular database source to Power BI Desktop, where will that imported data be store at?

Please help me out. Thanks!

-Vincent

[ankitpatira]

@vlcc

On top of what @austinsense said, in powerbi desktop until you publish to powerbi service, data is stored locally within powerbi in pbix (powerbi file) file.

[vlcc]

@ankitpatira I can conclude that there is no local datastore or temp folder to store that imported dataset in powerbi desktop. Do I get it right? This will lead to second question, once the dataset is published to powerbi site can we retrieve that published dataset to be opened in powerbi desktop? Will we be able to open that dataset (.pbix) in other application lets say in Excel? thank you

[ankitpatira]

@vlcc Once dataset is published to powerbi service  you can use powerbi service to create new reports as well using that published dataset (but with limited functionality). However from powerbi desktop you can't connect to published dataset nor you can download published dataset. 

You can't open pbix file in Excel however there is a feature called Analyze in Excel which lets you connect live to published dataset from microsoft excel. 

[Bahhoussi]

@ankitpatira Is it possible to use this feature "analyze in excel" directly from Power BI desktop ? Otherwise is it possible to send a Power BI dataset to excel without going through power BI service ? 

Thanks a lot.

[austinsense]

The answer is yes - here's how it works.

1. Open Your Power BI model.

2. You have to figure out which port Power BI is running on. Download this tool and find the "Remote Port" for Power BI Desktop

3. Go to excel and create a connection to "Analysis Services" - the server name is "localhost:[Remote Port]"

That's it.  When you close and re-open Power BI Desktop it will be assigned a new port number so you'll have to change that in Excel. It would be SO easy for Microsoft to build this feature into the product - You can vote on it here.

[austinsense]

The data is stored in Microsoft Azure.  Here's all the documentation.

[Anonymous]

Hi to all,

I published on PowerBi Portal a data set from PowerBi Desktop, but in my Azure workspace I can't see the stored data (neither in Azure SQL Database, nor in Azure Blob). How can I see where data is stored ?

Thanks!

[powerbiuser1]

where exactly in Azure?

[vlcc]

@austinsense thanks for the reference. That will help once I get to exploring powerbi service more in depth.