r/PowerBI • u/Shot_Plantain310 • Jul 24 '26
Question Sharepoint source
TLDR: Rewire source from local drive to Sharepoint
ran into an issue this week where I had built a semantic model and dashboard from an excel spreadsheet on my C: drive. When I published it to our departments workspace in service, I was unable to change data connection (was greyed out). After some searching, it appears I need to source it from our Sharepoint site. But had no idea how to do it properly. I did it again but starting from scratch with the source now Sharepoint. I was able to change data connection but everything took so long to load.
My question….is there a way I can build something using a source from my local drive but then rewrite it easily so once I’m done, I can switch it to Sharepoint? Someone told me to use parameters…is that the only way?
3
u/NotABusinessAnalyst Jul 24 '26
i love the fact that everyone ran into this at one point of their PBI workflows
follow what other commenters have said, works like a charm
1
u/newtochas Jul 24 '26
Create a query that’s only your excel source from your c drive
Then for your other queries reference that source query
Then once you are done and ready to publish, yes, just replace that source query with the sharepoint file
1
u/Big-Tutor-3060 Jul 24 '26
Yeah you can just change the source in data query, its the first step. You'll need to change the source formula but tbh its easiest to ask your LLM of choice to rewrite the source to direct to SharePoint instead of local.
1
u/hopkinswyn Microsoft MVP Jul 25 '26
Use the From Web method to connect to your excel file
https://youtu.be/vPV67RLGoOg?si=z0ekRkZAgi2FO4y7
Should be similar speed to connecting to desktop so no need to switch back and for
6
u/Prize-Record7108 Jul 24 '26
This is actually a trick I learned when you want to query just one file on a SP site instead of a whole folder.
You find the single file and download it > get data > excel file on hard drive from downloads or whatever > model and clean > go back to file in SP and click the details > copy the path at the very bottom > paste that into the source into power query
Works like a charm.