The Practical Guide to Connecting Excel to Power BI and Fabric Data

The Hidden Fragility of Manual Excel Workflows

TLDR: Grab a copy of the PDF guide at the bottom of this post to see how to connect Excel to Semantic Models in an automated way.

We've all seen it. An Excel report gets daily use across the business, but the data it depends on comes from a dusty CSV downloaded from a legacy system. Someone pastes it into a hidden sheet, crosses their fingers, and hopes the formulas don’t break this time.

This is still common in finance, operations, and sales reporting.

The problem? While Excel is flexible, these workarounds are fragile. Manual steps introduce lag, increase the chance of errors, and rely on tribal knowledge. When a team member leaves or takes time off, the report might break with them.

Better Together: Excel, Power BI and Microsoft Fabric

Excel remains essential. It is familiar, powerful, and widely adopted. But when connected to live, structured data from the cloud, it becomes a reliable tool instead of a risky one.

That is where Power BI and Microsoft Fabric come in.

However, the default “Get Data from Power BI” feature often underdelivers. It is restrictive, slow, and difficult for non-technical users. There are better ways to connect Excel to cloud data, but most people do not know where to start. Take a look at our guide below for the steps needed to pick the proper connection type.

When to Move Beyond Excel

In some cases, Excel is no longer the right tool. When you need version control, user commentary, audit trails, or structured workflows, it makes sense to move reporting and planning into Power BI itself.

With tools like Aimplan, users can input data, run scenarios, and manage forecasts inside Power BI while still keeping the usability of Excel where it makes sense.

Download the Guide

We’ve published a guide that compares all the methods covered above. It’s simple and focused on what actually works.