Excel published to service - cannot refresh

[spock1984]

Dear community,

I have a problem with PBI Service. Here is the situation:

1) I set up a PBI report in Desktop, published it to Premium workspace

2) I used "Analyze in Excel" function - created a report in Excel connected to dataset from point 1. In Excel you can do a Refresh All and it works well

3) published the Excel to PBI Service, same Premium workspace

My intention is to publish an APP that would have both PBI report from point 1 and Excel.

Problem is - I cannot refresh the Excel or interact with Pivots when opening from PBI Service. There is an indicator that "Data refresh isn't supported for workbooks with no data model". The fact is workbook is using existing data model that is available in the service.

Is there any workaround? I do not want to duplicate the data model in Excel. My dataset is refreshing on regular basis.

Can anyone help?

[v-kelly-msft]

Hi @spock1984 ,

After using "Analyze in excel "function,you can save this Power BI dataset connected workbook just like any other workbook. However, you cannot publish or import the workbook back into Power BI because you can only publish or import workbooks into Power BI that have data in tables, or that have a data model. Since the new workbook simply has a connection to the dataset in Power BI, publishing or importing it into Power BI would be going in circles!

My suggestion for you is to download the .pbix file from service then modify it in desktop and save it as another report.

Here is a reference about "analyze in Excel":

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-analyze-in-excel

Best Regards,
Kelly

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[Greg_Deckler]

Why is it necessary to use Excel versus Matrix visualizations or a Power BI report?