Power BI Direct Connect Refresh to XLS Fail

[fishleaf]

Hello,

The backgroud information is, I have an XLS file on our SharePoint Online. At the begining, I use "SharePoint Folder" as the data source and navigate to my file. On my Power BI Desktop, I can build my report and even refresh my data without any problem.

 

The problem comes after I published it on Powerbi.com. I entered my OAth2 Credential and used the direct connect method. However, the system returns the following message:Excel Workbook: The 'Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0' provider is not registered on the local machine. The 64-bit version of the Access Database Engine 2010 Access Database Engine OLEDB provider is required to connect to read this type of file. To download the client software, visit the following site: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=285987.

But we all know that it is a direct connect, and it is the Power BI server that does the refresh job, there's no way I can install the connector there...

I also tried to switch the data source to "Web" (Like how we connect to a data from OneDrive for Business), but I still get the same error. 

Did anyone run into the simliar error?

Thank you,

Matthew

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@fishleaf Can't say I have a lot of direct experiance, but I know @Mike_Carlo wrote up a walkthrough on that here and there are some tidbits in the comments that may be helpful with the refreshing.

[fishleaf]

Hi Eno1978,

Thank you so much for your quick reply. Actually I used the same method as the link used (you can tell our "Applied Steps" are the same). 

I think the only issue here is the XLS file... I don't know how to make power bi "refresh server" read the xls file, or there's are some good workaround...

Thank you,

Matthew

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@fishleaf Give a peek at this thread. Looking more closely at the error, it appears you are missing a data provider/ it's a 32 bit vs. 64 bit issue.

[fishleaf]

Hi Eno1978,

Thank you so much for the follow up. Actually this is not the same issue. 

You can tell your thread shows he has issue with Power BI Desktop, so we can tell he didn't install the connector on his local machine. I can also refresh it on my local machine becasue I installed the connector. 

But my problem is the Power BI Online version. When using direct connect, the Power BI server, not my local machine, does the refresh. Since it is on the cloud, I can trigger this refresh from any machine. So even I install the connect in my local, the server will give me an error message. 

That's why I run out of work around... because business requires the file to be xls... I can't believe Power BI Server didn't install the connector...

Thank you,

Matthew 

[v-ljerr-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @fishleaf,

As described in this article "Power BI supports importing or connecting to workbooks created in Excel 2007 and later. Workbooks must be saved as .xlsx or .xlsm file type and be under 1 GB", refreshing against a .xls file is not supported currently. 

A similar idea is already shared on Power BI Ideas. You can vote it up and add your comments here to improve Power BI and make this feature coming sooner.

Regards

[fishleaf]

Thank you so much for this research!! I tired Google but totally missed this article!!