From Power BI to Excel: Creating Dynamic, Automated Reports in the Cloud

By Daniil Slesarenko

Unified Reporting Between Power BI and Excel

Power BI and Excel now work together as a single reporting ecosystem. Power BI provides governed, refreshable semantic models, while Excel remains ideal for flexible analysis, modeling, and financial workflows. Connecting Excel to Power BI allows teams to build dynamic, cloud-based reports that stay accurate and automatically updated—eliminating manual CSV exports and offline workbooks.

Core Integration Capabilities

Key integration features include “Analyze in Excel,” which creates a live connection to Power BI datasets for PivotTables and charts, Excel Data Types for expanding entity attributes, and Connected Tables for refreshable data without pivot structures. Workbooks can also be published to Power BI workspaces for scheduled refresh, centralized governance, and version control. The Excel add-in improves discoverability and makes connecting to certified datasets seamless.

Automated Cloud-Based Reporting

Once connected, Excel workbooks automatically pull updates from Power BI datasets. Combined with SharePoint, OneDrive, and Power Automate, this enables fully automated reporting with a single version of the truth and no repetitive extraction tasks. This workflow is especially effective for financial reporting, where P&L workbooks can be connected to semantic models, built out with pivots and formulas, published, and scheduled for automated refresh and distribution.

Best Practices

Use certified datasets and live connections rather than static imports, maintain clear semantic models, enforce row-level security, and avoid duplicating logic in Excel when measures exist in Power BI. Following these steps ensures consistent, trusted analytics across the organization.

Conclusion

Power BI provides the governed data foundation; Excel provides analysis flexibility. Together, they enable dynamic, automated, cloud-managed reporting with consistent logic, reduced manual work, and up-to-date insights across teams.