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Power BI Blog: New Way to Upload Power BI and Excel Files

Welcome back to
this week’s edition of the Power BI blog series.  This week, we look at a new way to upload
Power BI and Excel files.

Microsoft has now
introduced a new, streamlined experience for uploading files to the Power BI Service.
 In the workspace you want to add files
to, you’ll see an Upload option next to the New button.  You’ll be able to use this dropdown to connect
to files stored in OneDrive for Business or any SharePoint site you have access
to or upload them from your computer through the Browse option.

If you choose to
upload a local file, a copy of that file is added to the workspace.  If you use the OneDrive or SharePoint option,
Power BI creates a connection to the file, and as you make changes to the file
in SharePoint, Power BI can automatically synchronise those changes approximately
every hour.

One of the benefits
of this new way to upload files, in addition to being centrally located, is
that the OneDrive and SharePoint options use the same file picker you’re used
to seeing in other Microsoft products.

Instead of having
to paste a direct URL to a given SharePoint site, you can now just select one
of your sites through the ‘Quick access’ section or the ‘More places’ link.  When uploading an Excel file through this
experience, your workbook appears in Power BI just like it would in Excel
Online:

For now, if you
want to actually import the data from the Excel file into a Power BI dataset,
you can continue to use the older ‘Get Data’ flow.  Very shortly (if not already completed by the
time this is published), Microsoft will also introduce a new way to create
datasets from CSV and Excel files.

The OneDrive for
Business and SharePoint options will be greyed out if you don’t have a
subscription for these products.  Of
course, you’ll still be able to browse for local files on your computer.

It should also be
noted that presently Power BI does not have an option to upload files from
personal OneDrive accounts.  For now, you
may continue using the older ‘Get Data’ flow to access files in your personal
account.  However, very shortly, Microsoft
does plan on removing the older ‘Get Data’ experience along with the option to
upload files from personal OneDrive accounts.  At this point, you’ll still be able to upload
local files if you do not have access to a business OneDrive account.

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.