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CarmelRabin
Regular Visitor

Looking for Advice - Long-Term Sustainability of Linking Power BI to Excel

Hi Power BI Community!

 

I am working on a new project for my organization and with new projects come new challenges. I am not sure if I am asking the right questions, but I would appreciate any advice/insights!!

 

I am working on a Power BI report that pulls data from multiple Excel files. These files will be routinely updated with additional data as quarters close and the data becomes available. Since I do not know if I will always be the report owner or how the files may change hands in the future, I am wondering where and how I should store my PowerBI and source files so that the report is usable in the future. I am concerned that if the source files are no longer accessable for update (or worse, become corrupted), someone will have to set up the entire report again.

 

Has anyone delt with this issue in their project before? Does anyone have advice?

 

Thank you!

1 REPLY 1
v-lili6-msft
Community Support
Community Support

hi, @CarmelRabin 

First, when you complete a Power BI report, you could publish it to power bi service, now it will be stored power bi service.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/desktop-upload-desktop-files

You could publish it to a App workspace, then share it with others.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-create-workspaces

And then you need to set refresh plan for it, see more detail see this post:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/autorefresh-under-app-powerbi-com/m-p/723300#M70735

 

And for source files, It's hard to say, that depends on your situation.

You could store it in local or cloud, Then get data from it.

If the data source changed, just download the pbix file from power bi service and open it in power bi desktop to change the data source as below:

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/How-to-replace-Data-Source-for-existing-report/td-p/58947

Then republish it and add a new data source in gateway too.

By the way: This requires the source files have the same data structure(same column name and table name)

 

Best Regards,

Lin

 

Community Support Team _ Lin
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