Connect to Excel Data Source in Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is a data visualization and Business Intelligence application. It can connect to variety of data sources. In this blog, we will discuss how to Connect to Excel Data Source in Power BI.
For this exercise, download a free version of Power BI
Connect to Excel Data Source in Power BI desktop
- Launch Power BI desktop. A welcome screen will popup, you can close the welcome screen.
- From the Home ribbon, select Get Data and then from the list of Common data sources, select Excel.
Note: In the new version of Power BI, Excel data source is also available directly from the ribbon (next to Get Data), you can connect using that as well.
Power BI has different ways to connect to data, learn how to use Query Editor to load data
4. When you click on Excel, you will be navigated to your Windows explorer. You can browse to your excel file.
The excel used for this example is OrderHeader.xls
5. After you select the excel file, Navigator dialogue will display the data preview.
6. You can choose to either Load or Transform Data. If you will select Transform Data, you will be navigated to Query Editor. It is used to transform the fields in the table.
I will select Load.
Once the data is loaded, you can see the data preview by clicking on the Data view from the left.
On the right, under Fields, you can see the OrderHeader.xls – Sheet1 is loaded. You can right-click and rename this Sheet1 to a meaningful name such as Orders. Fields pane can also be used to change the data type, aggregations and other properties of the fields in the table.
7. Click on the Model view to see your table has been displayed in the model. As you will load multiple tables, you can create relationships among them.
After connecting to the data source, you can create Charts in Power BI
About the Author
Chandraish Sinha has 20+ years of experience in Information Technology. He is an accomplished author and has published 11 books covering Business Intelligence related topics such as, Tableau,Power BI, and Qlik. Checkout his Amazon Author profile.
His latest book Excel Basics to Advanced covers all the aspects of MS Excel and provides exercises for self-learning.
Similarly, his recent book, Dashboarding with Tableau, covers all the features in Tableau and includes exercises for self-learning.
He has implemented IT solutions in different domains viz. Pharmaceutical, Healthcare, Telecom, Financial and Retail.
He blogs regularly on various IT topics. Check them out in the links given below: