From Excel to Power BI 8 Simple
Reasons why it's
worth making the Switch

Microsoft Excel and Power BI - the Leading Tools for your Business Analyses

Do your Excel analyses seem to take forever? Do you spend hours creating individual charts? And then send the presentation as a PDF via email? There must be a more efficient way!

How about this: you provide your colleagues and managers with important data in real time via interactive evaluations. And you don’t have to search through mountains of data to find the relevant information; you can simply display it with a click of the mouse. Does that sound more effective? Then it’s time to take a look at Power BI - instead of continuing to rely solely on Excel. We’ll show you which of the two solutions is advantageous in which cases, based on various aspects.

Excel: the Solid All-rounder among Data Analysis Tools

Excel has been Microsoft’s standard spreadsheet tool since 1985. It allows you to sort, organize, and store your data using rows and columns. You can also perform simple calculations in Excel and apply targeted formulas to examine your data more closely.

Power BI: the Visualization Genius for Complex Data

Power BI is Microsoft’s business analytics tool, which has been publicly available to customers since 2015. The analysis options here go far beyond tables and simple charts. You can create personal dashboards, complex analyses, reports, and interactive, dynamic visualizations. Power BI offers several tools for this purpose.

Power BI VS. Excel - 8 Features to help you determine which Solution is Right for you

1. Getting started

   Since Excel is a very popular tool, many users are already familiar with how to use it from their school days. This means that no time-consuming training is necessary - you can get started right away.

   Many users initially find Power BI more complex than Excel. In fact, the learning curve for beginners is steeper - because you have to acquire (more) new knowledge. This naturally requires more patience. Nevertheless, you will quickly find your way around Power BI even without programming or database knowledge.

2. Functionality: Integrating Data

   Excel offers many options for connecting data sources. Another advantage of Excel is that you can enter your data manually. You can then convert this data directly into formulas, tables, and graphs.

   Power BI can integrate even more data sources than Excel and offers a particular advantage when it comes to cloud data sources. With Excel, you often have to temporarily store your data. Power BI also enables live connections, making it the more future-oriented tool.

3. Functionality: Preparing Data

   Both tools allow you to prepare your data in Microsoft Power Query. Among other things, Power Query filters data and combines heterogeneous data. These data mashups use the “Power Query M” language. Power Query M is a functional language that is case-sensitive and similar to F#.

   However, the most important difference between Power BI and Excel in terms of data preparation is the ability to create so-called “measures” in Power BI using the DAX programming language. Although this is more complicated to get started with, as the application is less familiar than Excel formulas, it definitely pays off in the long run.

4. Functionality: Visualizing Data

   Excel already offers a wide range of options for visualizing your data. The visualizations are relatively easy to create, although the rule of thumb applies here too: “Simple” is easier to represent in Excel than “complex.”

   Power BI opens up completely new possibilities for visualization thanks to its interactivity: from filters and cross filters to drill-down functions and links - interactive evaluations can be created here with ease. In Excel, this might only be possible with a great deal of development effort.

   With the help of cross filtering, for example, you can check how the respective values in the database relate to each other. When you set a cross filter, Power BI removes the invalid data. Comprehensive highlighting allows you to retain all the original data points. Only the part that does not apply to your selection is dimmed.

   The cross filter principle becomes even clearer in the following example. First, set the year filter to “2021.” Then select “Big Foot Technology” from the “Top 10 der stundenintensivsten Kundinnen und Kunden.” The relevant data is then highlighted across the board in the stacked bar chart “Darstellung der Verteilung von verfügbaren Arbeitsstunden.” Finally, remove the annual filter again and you will see the proportion of working hours over the years in the chart once more.

   Another advantage of Power BI is the wide selection of ready-made visualizations available in the Marketplace. These save you the trouble of having to “tinker” with each individual visualization.

5. Functionality: Sharing Reports

   The only advantage Excel has in this category is that you can display the Office tool on almost any device. However, reports remain file-based in Excel, which inevitably leads to redundancy, version conflicts, and discrepancies. In addition, distributing files also causes security issues. You can mitigate these disadvantages by storing the data in a document management system - but you cannot eliminate them completely.

   Microsoft Power BI also offers you more in this regard: reports that you have created with Power BI Desktop can be published in the Power BI web portal - this is free in the basic version.

   If you need to perform regular reporting, Power BI is therefore a better choice than Excel. Something you should generally avoid doing in your everyday working life these days is sending files back and forth by email.

6. Functionality: Updating Reports

   Excel spreadsheets can be updated manually after opening at the touch of a button. Fully automatic updates are also possible with the integrated Visual Basic programming language - but this is very complicated in Excel.

   You can also update Power BI Desktop manually with just one click. For reports in the Power BI web portal, however, it is advantageous to set automatic updates for all users as the default. This means that individual users no longer have to think about updates at all. Power BI saves you steps and time compared to Excel.

7. Costs

   Excel is included in every Office package, meaning that the solution is already integrated into many companies without incurring any new costs for you.

   You can install the Power BI portal in the basic version and Power BI Desktop free of charge - this already gives you a number of options for working with your data.

   If that’s not enough for you, you can purchase additional licenses as needed. Among other things, the Pro version allows you to collaborate in the portal. It costs €13.10 per user license per month. Alternatively, it is included in the Office 365 E5 package.

   If you need to handle even larger amounts of data, we recommend the Premium Per User version, which is available for €22.50 per user per month. This version also includes various AI functions.

8. Data Security

   A user with whom you share visualizations in Excel can access the integrated data without restriction. Since data protection plays an important role these days, this is of course not always welcome.

   In Power BI, on the other hand, you can define individual data protection rules and restrict data access for specific users.

   Among other things, you also have the option of integrating sensitivity labels into Power BI data. You can extend data loss prevention and governance with Microsoft Cloud App Security, allowing you to keep an even closer eye on sensitive data.

   If you work with many different users who need different levels of access to your data, Power BI with its wide range of additional functions is the ideal solution.

   

Simple with Excel - Complex with Power BI

Both Microsoft tools have their place when it comes to data analysis - each is useful in different situations.

Excel is known as the “standard spreadsheet software” and the solid all-rounder in data analysis. It is primarily used to organize, format, and calculate simple data sets.

The business intelligence tool Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on visualizing more complex data, sharing reports via the cloud, and providing advanced functions. At first glance, Power BI can seem daunting with its many features - but it will definitely pay off in the long run. Especially in view of the ever-increasing amounts of data.

By the way: you can also combine Power BI and Excel to further optimize the quality of your reports. For example, you can use an Excel spreadsheet as the data basis for a visualization in Power BI.

So it depends on the requirements of your reports and your company - ultimately, both tools have their strengths. Therefore, you are not faced with a fundamental “either/or” decision here, but it is best to use the appropriate tool depending on the individual case.