How to Save Power BI File as Excel

While Power BI is a phenomenal tool for building interactive dashboards, sometimes you just need to get your data into a good old-fashioned Excel spreadsheet. Whether it's for ad-hoc analysis, sharing with a colleague who doesn't use Power BI, or just because you're more comfortable with PivotTables, getting your data out is a common task. This guide will walk you through the simplest and most effective ways to save your Power BI data as an Excel file.

Why Would You Export from Power BI to Excel?

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Exporting isn't a sign that Power BI is lacking, it's about using the right tool for the job. You might need your data in Excel for several practical reasons:

Broad Accessibility: Just about everyone has Excel. Exporting your data makes it easy to share insights with stakeholders who aren't on the Power BI platform.
Ad-Hoc Analysis: Power BI is great for structured dashboards, but Excel is brilliant for quick, messy analysis. You might want to experiment with calculations, jot down notes next to cells, or create a quick custom chart without affecting the main report.
Annotation and Commentary: You might need to add specific notes or context to certain rows of data before sending it off. Excel's cell-based structure is perfect for this.
Statutory Reporting or Snapshots: For compliance or archival purposes, sometimes you need a static, point-in-time snapshot of your data. An Excel export provides a perfect, unchanging record.
Integration with Other Models: You may have existing financial models, forecasts, or other complex spreadsheets in Excel that need data from Power BI. Exporting is the first step in feeding those models.

Understanding the Basics: Exporting Data, Not Files

First, a crucial point of clarification: you cannot simply "Save As" a .PBIX file and convert it into an .XLSX file. A Power BI file contains your data model, queries, relationships, and visual designs. An Excel file is a spreadsheet. The goal isn't to convert the report itself, but to export the data that a Power BI report uses or displays.

Power BI offers a few different ways to do this, each suited to a different need. The main methods we'll cover are:

Exporting data directly from a visual in your report.
Using the powerful "Analyze in Excel" feature to connect a live PivotTable to your Power BI dataset.
Performing a quick copy and paste for simple tables.

Let's break down each method with step-by-step instructions.

Method 1: Exporting Data from a Visual in a Report

This is the most common and direct method for grabbing the data behind a specific chart, table, or slicer. You can do this in both Power BI Desktop and the Power BI Service (the online version). The process is nearly identical.

Step-by-Step Guide to Exporting from a Visual:

Navigate to Your Report: Open the Power BI report containing the visual you want to extract data from.
Select the Visual: Hover your mouse over the visual. You'll see a few icons appear in the top-right corner.
Click the Ellipses (...): Click on the "More options" icon, which looks like three horizontal dots (...). This will open a dropdown menu.
Choose "Export data": In the dropdown menu, you will see an option labeled "Export data." Click it.
Select the Data Format and Type: This is the most important step. A dialog box will appear, giving you a few choices. The exact options can vary slightly, but you'll generally see two main types of exports:
- Summarized data: This option exports the data exactly as you see it in the visual. If you're looking at a bar chart showing sales by month, you will get a table with two columns: "Month" and "Total Sales." It exports the aggregated or grouped results. This is ideal when you just need the high-level numbers from a chart. You can typically choose between Excel (.xlsx) or comma-separated values (.csv). For Excel, there's a row limit of 150,000.
- Underlying data: This option exports the more detailed, raw data that's being used to create the visual's summary. Using the same sales example, this export would give you the individual sales transactions that make up the monthly totals. It lets you see the granular data behind the aggregation. This is incredibly useful for deep-dive analysis. This option typically requires a Power BI Pro or Premium license and has a much higher export limit of 1,000,000 rows. It saves the file as an .xlsx.
Click "Export": After making your selection, click the "Export" button. Your browser will download the Excel file, which you can then open and use.

Method 2: Using "Analyze in Excel" for Dynamic Analysis

What if you want more than a static data dump? What if you want to explore the entire dataset in Excel using an Excel PivotTable, but with a live, refreshable connection to your Power BI data model?

This is where "Analyze in Excel" comes in. It is, by far, the most powerful and flexible method for bridging the gap between the two tools. Instead of a one-time export, it creates a live connection.

Prerequisites for "Analyze in Excel":

You'll need a Power BI Pro or Premium license.
You must have the proper permissions ("build" permissions) for the dataset in Power BI.
For some users, an administrator may need to enable this feature organization-wide.

Step-by-Step Guide to Using "Analyze in Excel":

Go to Power BI Service: Log in to your Power BI account at app.powerbi.com.
Find Your Dataset or Report: Navigate to the workspace that contains the data you're interested in. You can start this process from either a report or a dataset.
Open the Export Options: Find the dataset or report in the list, click the ellipses (...) next to its name, and select "Analyze in Excel" from the dropdown menu.
Download the Connection File: Power BI will generate a small Office Data Connection (.odc) file and download it to your computer.
Open the File in Excel: Find the downloaded .odc file in your Downloads folder and double-click to open it. It will automatically launch Microsoft Excel.
Enable the Connection: Excel will show a security warning. Click "Enable" to allow the connection to the external data source (which is your Power BI dataset). You may also be asked to sign in to your Power BI account to authenticate.
Start Analyzing: That's it! Excel will open with a blank PivotTable. On the right-hand side, in the "PivotTable Fields" pane, you'll see the complete data model from Power BI - all your tables, columns, and measures. You can now drag and drop these fields to build reports, just as you would with any other PivotTable, knowing the data is being pulled live from Power BI.

Every time you open this Excel file, you can right-click the PivotTable and hit "Refresh" to pull the latest data from Power BI.

Method 3: The Quickest Method for Tables: Copy and Paste

Sometimes you don't need a full export, you just need to grab a small table of data quickly. For visuals that are already in a table or matrix format, this is often the fastest way.

Step-by-Step Guide for Copying a Table:

Navigate to the table or matrix visual in your Power BI report.
Hover over the visual and click the ellipses (...) in the top-right corner.
Go to "More options."
Select "Copy table" or "Copy selection to clipboard."
Open a blank Excel workbook and press Ctrl+V (or right-click and select "Paste").

The data will appear in your spreadsheet, though it may lose some of its original formatting. This method is great for quickly moving small datasets but isn't a scalable solution for larger or more complex data.

Best Practices and Things to Watch Out For

As you start exporting data, keep these tips in mind to avoid common pitfalls:

Respect the Row Limits: Be aware of the export limits. If you need more than 150,000 rows of summarized data, you may need to apply filters in Power BI first and perform multiple exports to get everything.
Check Administrator Settings: If you don't see the "Export data" or "Analyze in Excel" options, it's likely that your organization's Power BI administrator has disabled them. You may need to reach out to your IT department or data team for access.
Remember That Exports Are Static: With the exception of "Analyze in Excel," any data you export is a static snapshot at that moment in time. If the data in Power BI updates, your Excel file will not. You'll need to export a new copy to see the changes.
Clean Data Models Lead to Clean Exports: The usefulness of your "Underlying data" export is directly related to how well-structured your data model is in Power BI. Clear table and column names will make life much easier when you're working with the data in Excel.

Final Thoughts

Getting your data from Power BI into Excel is a straightforward process once you know the different methods available. For quick, static snapshots of individual charts and tables, exporting directly from a visual is your best bet. For deep, interactive analysis using features you already love in Excel, the "Analyze in Excel" option provides a powerful, live connection.

Manually moving data between different tools is a necessary task, but it can quickly become repetitive, especially if you find yourself creating the same reports every week. We built Graphed because we believe getting insights shouldn't require so much manual work. By connecting directly to your sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and marketing platforms, Graphed lets you build automated, real-time dashboards just by describing what you want in plain English. This eliminates countless hours spent downloading CSVs and wrangling spreadsheets, letting you focus on the insights, not just the reporting.