Update: Publish your Excel (O365) reports to Power BI Service

You can now publish your Excel reports to Power BI Service directly from Excel. You just need to:

Click “File” menu

Click “Publish”

Click “Publish to Power BI”

Select any desired workspace from the dropdown

Click “Upload”

You can then find the Excel workbook in the “Workbooks” section in the Power BI Service.

If you’re using the older versions of Excel then continue reading.

It’s been awhile that lots of Excel users were wondering if there is a way to include their Excel elements into Power BI dashboards. With Power BI Publisher for Excel you’re now able to publish snapshots on your important PivotTables, Charts, cell ranges etc. to your Power BI Dashboards. In this post you’ll learn how to get the job done.

How does Power BI Publisher for Excel works?

With the Power BI Publisher Excel you take snapshots of your important insights in Excel and Pin them in Power BI Dashboards.

You need to download and install the Power BI Publisher for Excel from here.

What Excel elements you can/cannot pin?

You can pin almost everything in your Excel worksheet including:

A range of cells (from a simple sheet, from a table or a pivot table)

Pivot charts

Illustrations and images

Text

However, you cannot pin 3D Maps or visualisations from Power View.

Note: Although you can pin almost everything from your worksheet to a Power BI Dashboard it doesn’t make sense to pin some elements like Slicers or Timeline filters.

Enabling Power BI Publisher for Excel

The Power BI Publisher for Excel add-in should be enabled by default, however, if for some reason it is not enabled you can manually enable it as below:

Sign in to Power BI Service with Your Account

To be able to pin your Excel elements to your Power BI dashboards you need to sign-in to your Power BI Service. When you open Excel for the first time after installing the publisher you’ll prompt to sign-in.

Click “Sign In”

Enter your account name then click “Sign In” again

Click “Work or School account”

Enter your password and “Sign In”

Click Close

If for any reason the sign-in form didn’t get through then:

Click “Power BI” tab from the ribbon

Click “Profile”

Click “Sign In” then follow the above steps

Pin a Range/charts to a Power BI Dashboard

You can select and pin any range of cells from your worksheets to your Power BI Dashboard.

In you r Excel worksheet select a range

Click “Power BI” tab from the ribbon

Click “Pin”

If you are not already singed into Power BI service you’ll be prompted to

Select an existing dashboard or create a new one

Click “Pin”

To pin a chart just simply click a chart then click Pin from Power BI tab

Now sign into your Power BI service using to see the tiles you pinned from Power BI Publisher for Excel.

Can I Refresh the pinned elements?

Yes you can. It is super easy. just select the element and pin it again. You’ll be prompted that the tile already exists in the dashboard and you have the option to update the existing one or add a new tile. To update an existing tile select “Update tile” then click OK.

You can also refresh multiple elements through Pin Manager which is explained below.

Managing Pinned Elements

You can refresh an element which is already pinned to a dashboard or you can remove it. You can also select multiple elements and update or remove all of them by following the steps below:

Click “Pin Manager” from “Power BI” tab from the ribbon

Select one or more elements then click “Update” to update and “Remove” to remove the pinned tiles from the Power BI Dashboard

Switch between Power BI Accounts

You can switch between Power BI Accounts to pin Excel elements.

Click “Profile” from “Power BI” tab

Click “Sign out”

Click “Sign In”

Enter the new account and sign into the Power BI Service normally

Select a Chart or Range and click pin

Now click “Pin Manager”

As you can see the elements you pinned to a dashboard when logged in to your previous Power BI account are exist in the Pin Manager with a warning icon on the right side, so if you want to switch to the new account forever, you can select the old elements and remove

Note: Removing a pinned element does NOT remove the associated tile in Power BI. So to remove the tiles from the old Power BI account you need to sing into that account and remove the tiles manually.

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