Newbie linking to excel data question

Question

Hello,

I'm working my way through the powerpivot help file.
I was under the impression that I could link a powerpivot table in workbook A for example, to an excel table (or data) in workbook B.

Based on the instructions in the help file, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Is it possible to create the type of link that I discussed above?

I understand that being able to make changes in the excel spreadsheet and having the changes automatically appear in the pivot table (in the same workbook) is cool. Am I pusing the limits of powerpivot with what I want to do?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you

 

Answer 1

 Hi,

 

This is possible in PowerPivot. You can use the "create linked table" button in the excel sheet with your data to load this data to PowerPivot. In this PowerPivot model you can add data from several other datasources as well. When you have import the data from all these sources you can start creating relationships between the tables. 

The automatic change detection only works in the above scenario. You need to have the excel data in the same workbook as your PowerPivot data. You can ofcourse load data from another workbook into PowerPivot as well but then the automatic detection doesn't work.

 

Kasper

Answer 2

Hi Kasper,

It sounds like I was doing it backwards. I was using the link table option in powerpivot, not the one in excel. I will go try it now and see if I can get it to work.

It's okay that the automatic update feature in powerpivot won't work because it's not a problem to select the manual update option as the need arises. I'll post back later on today with the results.

Thank you
Tracy