How Power BI can save your time: guide for Excel Users

Excel is a powerful tool that will easily structure, analyse and even visualise your data. The problem comes when your data comes from different sources, when it’s complex (read: not transactional) and requires your daily input to be up-to-date. As a result, you may feel that you are married to the Excel spreadsheet based on the time you spend with this tool. No matter the industry, no matter your position and experience, it becomes your responsibility to optimise the time you and your team spend on reporting. The answer is simple: combine your Excel spreadsheets with Power BI. It will significantly increase your visualisation capabilities and will give you new ways to explore business data – all in less time. Let’s explore and explain 6 fundamental tips from Microsoft.  

1. Connect your data easily from any device

No need to be a designer nor a programmer to create stunning visualisations with Power BI. Transfer reports, queries and models that you’ve created in Excel to Power BI to enable accessing from any device, any place.  

2. Automate your data refresh with one click

How many times have you clicked Refresh and Save buttons working in Excel? Use Schedule Data Refresh to keepyour data sources refreshed in the background. No action required, every time you or your colleague open the dashboard, the right data will be there.  

3. Visualise multiple-source data on a single dashboard

You can display numerous spreadsheets with large variety of tabs on a single dashboard, combined with other data sources such as Files, online data like Google Analytics, CRM platforms like Salesforce and Dynamics, ERP systems such as SAP, and any database like SQL Server and Oracle.  

4. Embrace self-service data visualisation

Excel report can be overwhelming for those who don’t work with the tool on a daily basis. Power BI’s interactivity and natural language query function will generate comprehensive insights for the decision-makers and your colleagues—even those who aren’t Excel experts. And the beauty of it: you will receive less follow-up questions.  

5. Bring advanced analytics to your models

Power BI is not only about interactive visualisations. It’s about advanced visualisations! The ability to run R / Python scripts and use R-powered custom visuals gives Power BI advanced custom visualisation, modelling, and predictive capabilities for advanced analytics workflows.  

6. Stay flexible

Your data is going to travel more than a backpacker on a world tour. From Excel to Power BI and back to Excel. With a single click, connect to your data models directly from Excel to create powerful PivotTables.   To see the example of how Power BI can be used to visualise and analyse data visit Microsoft Showcase page or check our Power BI HR Analytics Demo.