I use both excel and Power BI to create dashboards. However, I am leaning more towards the BI due to visual compared to excel and ability to create your app in BI is a huge plus. Great video and unbiased comparisons
Wow! I had gone through numerous comparisons between Power BI and Excel, but this video has put it succinctly! Thanks for clearing the confusion in such an easy manner and to the point! 😊👍
I noticed myself only using PowerBI if the data source doesn't need further massaging. I just add it to a model and I am running. On the other hand, Excel is king if you need to "build" your data. If the requester wants a certain view but gives me data clearer than mud, then Excel it is. I can build and adjust data that I trust, and I can apply changes anytime the requirements change. Sometimes, when the data becomes too big, I might mirror my Excel dashboard in PowerBI. The only thing I really appreciate with PowerBI is that when using the desktop version, the users can actually drill and see records associated to the graph elements. In Excel your users pretty much need to know how to filter the data or calculate the measures themselves to get to the list you are presenting. And if they are not Excel savvy enough, you might be called on to find a way to present the data that represent the graph elements because they "cannot click to see"...
Great to hear you use both Excel and Power BI. Don't forget that Power BI has the same Power Query tools so if your data is messy you can still clean it in Power BI if required.
excelente analisis, soy principiante en ambas soluciones ( Power Bi, y Power Pivot) pero los videos y la forma de explicar hace mucho mas facil poder interactuar con elllo, felicitaciones y saludos desde Chile
Very good analysis.Power BI has immense analytical capabilities but the dynamics and the flexibility excel offers will be too much to give up . I am not even talking about pivot table or VBA ,am talking about combining functions and having full determination of the grid . You can visualise multiple sets of analysis on the same graph. Volume remains a limitation ,but that depends on the kind of data one usually deal with .Many people dont require a million rows of data. But your analysis has made me realise i need to explore power BI more .Thanks
Thanks, Chris! I've not used Tableau so I can't comment first hand. However, the Gartner review puts Power BI above Tableau. You can read more of the review here: powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-named-a-leader-in-gartners-2020-magic-quadrant-for-analytics-and-bi-platforms/
Very good post! :) but just a question, if I am using 64-bit excel for power pivot, can others open/refresh the file even if they only have 32-bit office? Thanks in adv!
Thank you! Others can open and refresh the file if they only have 32-bit but if your model is large then they may have performance issues. It's recommended you have 32-bit Power BI installed. It doesn't really matter if you have 32-bit Office and 64-bit Power BI unless you're using the Excel Power BI tools.
Hi, thanks this is very useful. the only struggle i have with Excel dashboards so far is that with a 100mb file (around 700.000 data lines (not more than 15 columns, but formulas in about 7 columns), the file opening/saving takes a lot of time ... do you have any tipps how to resolve that problem? thanks and br,Zsolt
Glad you found it helpful. The slow file will be caused by your formulas. You should use Power Query to import your data to Excel and put the formulas in there. It's far more efficient to calculate the columns in Power Query than it is in the Excel grid.
My thoughts are power bi is more built for corporate individuals who need to see dynamic data without opening a file or reading an email. Excel is more for the lower level deep diving type information where a person is trying to analyze a specific group of people. Both are good and worth learning both given the opportunity. Great vid.
Bi is definitely more powerful - easily (that is the advantage - ease). But it fails. It fails because it is not as ubiquitous as Excel being locked into a Microsoft requirement of working in a company or educational setting. For me this is a fatal flaw. Having to have one of those accounts to publish and share your Bi work is non-starter. Excel doesn't have that problem. I can build reports and dashboards and share them without having to be locked into having a company or an educational account.
Just watched the comparison between Power BI and Excel. It saved me many hours of research and helped to make a decision right away regarding which platform to use for my project. great job!
Excellent comparison Mynda! I think you’ve just about nailed it: ultimately, it’s ‘horses for courses’ and it really depends on individual use case and business context. A key word you used was “adhoc” and that really describes the key differential for me: Excel is my daily driver, I’ll use it for quick analysis and tactical solutions. On the other hand, Power BI is the tool I will use to construct firmer, more strategic solutions which have a longer shelf life. From a personal perspective, I like how Power BI tidies my workspace; instead of 6 or 7 spreadsheets my data is consolidated within the engine. Clearly source files are still referenced but these can exist elsewhere and aren’t a distraction. One drawback is probably performance: Excel is rapid whereas Power BI can get a little sluggish. That can be frustrating, but again it’s about aligning the right tool for the right objective. Great vid and thank you so much for making it 😊
Thanks, D L. And thanks for sharing your perspectives on the two tools. There's a lot to be said for a tidy workspace, especially when building reports.
Very comprehensive video, thanks. The biggest difficulty I've found with power bi is getting people to use it! I wish they'd designed it more tightly with Excel too, with new features released to both at the same time and aligned in terms of presentation and function (slicers especially!). I like the functionality of power pivot for example, but it's ugly and uninviting. In my opinion they should have integrated with power query into a single interface and made it look like the power bi experience. It would reduce the learning curve between the two. Similarly, data connections should be exactly the same whether using bi or Excel, shareable between the two. The only difference should be whether the users choose to use Excel or power bi to present their data. You're right about Excel formulae being more advanced, however without the ability to integrate with data in the data model, they're not that flexible for working with dashboards created using it. I've often found myself creating a convoluted Dax measure that would be extremely simple in Excel just to utilise the slicer.
Thanks, Rico. It's great to hear your perspective and experience. Unfortunately, because Excel is a very established program it is not as easy to update and make changes. Whereas Power BI being completely new from the ground up, is more agile and able to have new features added without breaking existing features more easily, hence why the pace of development in Power BI is rapid compared to Excel. That's not to say they can't implement some of your ideas, but goes to explain why they don't release new features at the same time.
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub agreed. Not that changes to excel aren't happening at a pace too. It'll be interesting to see the direction of travel in the coming months and years.
This is not a fair comparison. Since you have mentioned VBA for one area, (refresh), you should include in the comparisons in all the other areas. Excel, coupled with VBA, can probably do everything Power BI can, plus a lot more, though admittedly not as fast. Also powerpivot in excel is not restricted to the 64 bit version. The 32 bit version of Excel also has powerpivot.
"Excel, coupled with VBA, can probably do everything Power BI can, plus a lot more" I disagree and I think you also have doubts given the use of 'probably' in that sentence. Perhaps you don't know Power BI as well as you know VBA. Sure, VBA can do a lot of cool stuff, but it's not the solution to having Power BI functionality in Excel. Power Pivot with 32-bit Excel is not recommended and suffers terribly with performance, even when using relatively small datasets. I don't like to set people up for failure, so better to be up front and make it clear that 64-bit is really the minimum requirement. By all means, use 32-bit if that's all you're allowed to have, but it comes with a warning.
Very very good! one small remark: True that the visuals in Excel don't interact. But I realy like the fact that if you use multiple slicers for one table to explore the data, these slices do interact. After selecting one or more options from one slicer, you can see which options of the other slicer are available. I heard that this option is quite memory intensive by the way....
@MyOnlineTrainingHub & @Mynda --- Another awesome video! This is a fair & authoritative review of both the fantastic tools - XL and PBI! Super cool that you were able to give the pros & cons of both systems, and also wear the right T-shirts! Appreciate this! Take care and stay safe!
The comparison is made only for dashboard and report. Excel is used by many for storing and organising data. So in that sense, I will just go with Excel.
Yes, this was purely comparing the two tools for building Dashboards because essentially that's the purpose of Power BI. Nothing compares to Excel for other uses like storing and organising data, and ad-hoc analysis.
Wish you would have summed up with a pros cons overall at the end. Too much this feature is in Power BI, but it’s also in Excel…. Doesn’t easily highlight differences
I don't know if I'm the only one, but watching this videos make me realize how stupid my coworkers are and that makes me just sad. There are clearly places where using Power BI makes no sense at all, but people just do what they are told. In my workplace people use SAS to make horrible documents containing exclusively tables in RTF format. Only for the people who need the stats to transfer those horribles tables to Excel in order to do their jobs. There are literally hundreds of thousands of lines of code to explore always the same data, over and over again, only with different programs, usually containing hundreds of lines of code each. Everything could have been a couple of spreadsheets with zero programming. The current structure takes days to calculate what excel does instantly with pivot tables. For me, it is a nightmare in which I could never imagined I would be, but it's secure and it pays well.
I'm trying to create a plan vs. actual from a Quickbooks Online export of data. I've got the Power Query all set up to eradicate the mess, but can't figure out how to get the plan numbers in there. The exported data is actual transactions. The plan data is independent of it. If I were to add the column during the Power Query set up and manually enter the plan numbers, it would be overwritten the next time I update the file. I'm on a Mac so can't use the Window Folder update method. Is there any other way to get the plan data to play nicely with the transaction data?
Hi Deb, great to hear you're working with Power Query to get your data. You can merge the actual and budget tables together in Power Query: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/excel-power-query-vlookup
Hey i want to ask you something right now i am learning ms excel from basic to advanced level and Vba too so I want to know from you that after completing my excel course should i go with power BI or excel till vba is sufficient for me...please reply
After mastering Excel, I would learn Power Query, then Power Pivot, then Power BI. Power Query and Power Pivot are used in both Excel and Power BI, so you get double the use of these tools. Much more worthwhile than learning VBA.
With work around In excel we can restrict data using VBA or Power Query for users. Ex: Fetch the Employee ID of the user at workbook open event and filter the data. If the data is in sheet it can be very hidden.
Thanks for sharing, Pavan. Those are great ideas, but users need to know that VBA is not super secure and with a quick Google search you'll find a video on how to remove VBA protection.
very good thanks but i have some issues about the learning curve for example visuals i feel it is very easy to learn in Power BI, also the data preparation i can get huge value from power BI even though i do not do data preparation in power bi environment like unpivot i can do it in excel for example
Great to hear you find Power BI visuals easy. Excel Pivot charts are easy too...after all, they're based on the same logic as Power BI i.e. a PivotTable. It's just in Power BI you don't see the PivotTable, only the field list and chart areas. The exact same data preparation tools in Power BI are in Excel, so that 'huge value' you talk about is in both tools. That's one of the main points I was trying to emphasize.
Thanks Mynda for this! It would be good to know which versions of Excel support PowerPivot. I use Excel 2013 and cannot find PowerPivot to enable. However, I have installed PowerQuery. Thanks!
Hi George, this post explains what versions support Power Pivot: support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/where-is-power-pivot-aa64e217-4b6e-410b-8337-20b87e1c2a4b
Very usefull, i recall from last presentation on Power BI the monthly subcribtion costs, at $10 per month, does on at face value appear to be quite high if you have ad hoc users, may access 1 / 2 report dask boards only. Interestig to know what corporate take-up is and if other subcribers to channel, would invest time in learning Power BI, but are not doing so as the licence cost is barrier to adopt and use.
One workaround on this to set up a guest account and give 'report account' credentials to users who need to see the report. Just a M365 account is enough for this, no Power BI pro license. Within your company's tenant even M365 subscription not needed. So there are alternatives:)
Hello Mindy, I work ad a non-profit organization as a volunteer and i am building a dashboard wat needs to be seen by a number of peaple. I use one vsc file as data source. What us the best way to show this online and be able to update it. Without making it cost a lot. Thank you for this video. Marius. Leergeld.nl
Hello Madam I had this intresting doubt. I am currently working on a transactional data so the data has duplicate records. This time instead of removing the records in power query . I want to see all the duplicate records data of a company in a single row. Example: 1|A 1|B 2|A 1|C 2|B Output: 1|A|B|C 2|A|B.
Great as usual. But AFAIK to be always up-to-date with excel, a time based subscription of office 365 is required like in power bi, so this extra cost maybe could also be mentioned. Regardless, it guys in my organization claim that both office 365 and power bi are now subscribed through cloud based licensing, which they say isn't secure enough in comparison with licensed hard copies. Thanks again!!
Yes, if you want to always have the latest version then the Office/Microsoft 365 subscription is the best option, but it's not more expensive than buying a perpetual license every 3 years. In fact, it is often cheaper depending on the license you choose. Either way, you've already paid for Excel, so there's no extra cost. As for the cloud based licensing not being secure, I have no idea why they would think this as there's no basis for it. There is absolutely no difference in 'security' with a perpetual license vs the 365 license.
Important to note that IOS excel does NOT support slicers so you can build a great interactive dashboard in Excel using a Windows machine which won’t work on your MacBook or ipad. Happy to stand corrected maybe another video?🙏
Your 11 min video saved my 8 hrs of learning Power BI, I have already learnt lots on Excel ranging from complex formulae, pivot & dashboards. Learning the same on a different software with much less flexibility and unfamiliarity is only going to be much frustrating, time consuming & less output. I will instead hone my skills on Excel further with VBA. Many thanks.
Hi Mynda! After watching your great videos I build in Excel a dashboard. I created the data in Query, that results in a table. From the table I created Pivot tables. I have noticed that my pivot tables do not refresh with the most recent data even if I refresh the table, refresh the powerpivot, or refresh all data. I also tried unchecking Enable background refresh and still it does not work. Do you have any idea on how to solve this? Thanks a lot!
Congratulations on building your own dashboard! If your data from Power Query is loaded into an Excel Table in the worksheet and from there you built PivotTables then you need to refresh twice, once for the query to load the data into the Table and a second time to update the PivotTables. It's better to keep the query as connection only and build the PivotTable directly from the query. This resolves the double refresh requirement.
:-) for dashboards, Power BI is great. However, the lack of formatting options is super frustrating coming from an Excel background where you can manipulate charts to do almost anything you want. Of course, you can build your own custom visuals with Power BI, but that's a complicated solution to something that should be easy. Of course, Power BI gets updates every month and those niggles will be ironed out over time.
I am sorry but I will discuss with this "huge selection of charts" in Power BI. Since 3 years I am using ONLY default one. Why? Because I used to use the customised one and I lost all of them with new version of PBI. Creators didnt support it anymore. So I had to rebuild my reports which cost time and money ofc. For me Visuals Excel >>>>> Power BI.
Hello maam I just started my MBA in Business Intelligence from National Forensic Science University Gandhinagar. My graduation was in LIFE Science ( Microbiology ), please guide me on where to begin ( Like what is the essential tool that I should master that industry needs? ) Thank you For your awesome content :)
I have a Sales table which include sales return, when I calculate total sales value its calculate sales return, but when I calculate Sales without GST that time not calculate properly. What Can I Do?
There's not a monthly subscription cost with PBI when you use PBIRS. Excel doesn't compare to PBI IMO. Security alone is reason enough to only use PBI if you're making enterprise level reports or dashboards.
PBIRS still has associated costs because you require a server and IT professionals to run it. I agree, Power BI has more sophisticated features, but not everyone has it, so Excel is still a great alternative.
I can create much more powerfull Dashboard in excel than PowerBI. Question is - what next? How I can share it with management/customer? And in this matter answer is only one - Power BI.
Excellent work! This resonates with my opinion too. Power BI has a really steep learning curve and the costs for Pro subscription are somewhat prohibitive. My industry (Engineering and Construction Projects) has a bias towards Excel as most professionals already use other software tools for functions such as Project Management or Procurement or F&A etc. and prefer to use Excel to do quick analysis on a data dump. Probably this is just due to the way this Industry works and not a comment on Power BI in the Excel vs. Power BI debate.
"Thank you so much, for sharing this concise and informative Power BI video. It has the potential to make a significant impact on both my personal and professional life. I truly appreciate your contribution!"
Hello, I have query, if possible can you please help me. I have project is converting excel dashboard to Power BI. I stuck in adding time in secondary Y axis. I want time as it is. Whenever i tried adding in the line value, it's converting to count or average etc.. i need no calculation.
Kindly assist. I have very many CSV files containing share prices which I need to merge in power query. each file contains data for a specific company. They all have the date column from 2010 to 2020. I want to have a final single output file in which the first column is the date , next column is the company, and then share price.(I.E extract only company and share prices from all other csv files since dates are the same--and discard other irrelevant columns) NB I do not want to append each file at the bottom of another but instead use common column headers. for instance the company column should contain all companies. and a given row should show the date, company and share price. Thanks.
What is the roadmap for Excel? I would think that the Excel team different from the PowerBI team and usually Excel would introduce some new features for visualization as they have done in the past.
Yes, the teams are different but they work closely together, especially since both tools use Power Query and Power Pivot. Currently a lot of effort is going into bringing Excel online up to speed and not a lot on chart development.
If possible, could you show a video about how you come up with the WHY. I look for metrics but have difficulty asking the question or explaining what is needed to get the info I want. Just thought you must have the analytical thinking to say "I want to see how much an employee is costing me to do "x"?" How you go about thinking of the charts and comparison to get the result. hopefully I"m making sense. PS...excellent simply to use videos.
Thanks, Brad! There are a fairly standard set of rules for which charts suit what type of data/scenario. I have a chart recipe eBook you can download from here that might help: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/workbook-downloads
Excellent comparison. One remark, though : 9:37, Power Pivot in Excel 32bit can also deal with millions of rows, it depends on how you build up your model.
Yes, but I don't recommend 32-bit. I've have endless emails from people complaining that their model is slow/crashing and it's usually because they're using 32-bit.
I think the reason why people prefer to use Excel because they’re used to it. I prefer Excel with Power Query since I can initiate impromptu checking within the Excel check to test and check the formula.
Thank you, just got hooked to your channel recently...tons of great stuff there. I have just one remark regarding the consumers of PowerBI dashboard having to have a licence too- I have been told by the IT department at my organization that if the dashboard is published (by a Pro or Premium user) into a workspace created by a Premium user, the clients don't need to have a licence. However, if a Pro user publishes into a workspace created by Pro (for example the My Space of a Pro user), then the end users will need to have a licence to be able to see the dashboard.
Awesome summary I still prefer using pandas to clean and manipulate data however I would really like to then have a this loaded onto power BI for visuals .Thanks for the really smart presentation 👍🏿
Porównanie możliwości i zastosowania Excel i Power Bi bardzo przydatne w podejmowaniu decyzji o wyborze programu do przedstawiania wyników. Dzięki za tak dokładne porównanie.👍
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I use both excel and Power BI to create dashboards. However, I am leaning more towards the BI due to visual compared to excel and ability to create your app in BI is a huge plus. Great video and unbiased comparisons
Great to hear, Bongani! Yes, the apps for Power BI are a great feature too.
Great Great Great Presentation. Big Big Big Thanks to Mynda Treacy for this exclusive comparison and super-duper excellent highlights.
So pleased it was helpful, Feroz :-)
Wow! I had gone through numerous comparisons between Power BI and Excel, but this video has put it succinctly! Thanks for clearing the confusion in such an easy manner and to the point! 😊👍
Glad it was helpful, Vijay!
I noticed myself only using PowerBI if the data source doesn't need further massaging. I just add it to a model and I am running. On the other hand, Excel is king if you need to "build" your data. If the requester wants a certain view but gives me data clearer than mud, then Excel it is. I can build and adjust data that I trust, and I can apply changes anytime the requirements change. Sometimes, when the data becomes too big, I might mirror my Excel dashboard in PowerBI. The only thing I really appreciate with PowerBI is that when using the desktop version, the users can actually drill and see records associated to the graph elements. In Excel your users pretty much need to know how to filter the data or calculate the measures themselves to get to the list you are presenting. And if they are not Excel savvy enough, you might be called on to find a way to present the data that represent the graph elements because they "cannot click to see"...
Great to hear you use both Excel and Power BI. Don't forget that Power BI has the same Power Query tools so if your data is messy you can still clean it in Power BI if required.
Thanks for the explanation.
Glad you liked it 😊
Great! Amazing! Ive been looking for it for months. Thanks a lot Mynda! Success for you, always 🙏
Glad it was helpful, Indry!
excelente analisis, soy principiante en ambas soluciones ( Power Bi, y Power Pivot) pero los videos y la forma de explicar hace mucho mas facil poder interactuar con elllo, felicitaciones y saludos desde Chile
Gracias, Sergio!
Insightful as usual 👌
God bless you Mynda!
Thanks, Bunmi!
excellent info dear Mynda
Thank you, Oswe :-)
Very good analysis.Power BI has immense analytical capabilities but the dynamics and the flexibility excel offers will be too much to give up . I am not even talking about pivot table or VBA ,am talking about combining functions and having full determination of the grid . You can visualise multiple sets of analysis on the same graph. Volume remains a limitation ,but that depends on the kind of data one usually deal with .Many people dont require a million rows of data. But your analysis has made me realise i need to explore power BI more .Thanks
Glad this comparison video was helpful.
You get instant Like, for those T-shirts :D
Aw, thanks, Javier!
Excellent review!
Glad you liked it!
I find that the moment you start to deal with big data sets, Power BI is the only tool that does not crash my laptop.
Laptop....yes, probably not enough CPU and ram.
Wonderful as usual! Thank you!
Thanks, George!
Thanks, really good video
Glad you liked it, Harold!
a good presentation.
Thanks 😊
Amazing video! What do you think about tableau?
Thanks, Chris! I've not used Tableau so I can't comment first hand. However, the Gartner review puts Power BI above Tableau. You can read more of the review here: powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-named-a-leader-in-gartners-2020-magic-quadrant-for-analytics-and-bi-platforms/
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub Thanks! Appreciate the reply. Love your videos
Very good post! :) but just a question, if I am using 64-bit excel for power pivot, can others open/refresh the file even if they only have 32-bit office? Thanks in adv!
Thank you! Others can open and refresh the file if they only have 32-bit but if your model is large then they may have performance issues. It's recommended you have 32-bit Power BI installed. It doesn't really matter if you have 32-bit Office and 64-bit Power BI unless you're using the Excel Power BI tools.
So the winner is Mynda?
Mynda is the winner!
Aw, thanks, Martien :-)
Anybody who works with data comes across a situation, where he has to do some kind of ad hoc dirty work, and for that, you will always need excel.
Indeed! This isn't about needing Excel or not, it's just a comparison between Excel and Power BI for building dashboards.
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub I know, sorry if I sounded like that. Anyway, good channel, subscribed to it, I still need to learn a lot.
Hi, thanks this is very useful. the only struggle i have with Excel dashboards so far is that with a 100mb file (around 700.000 data lines (not more than 15 columns, but formulas in about 7 columns), the file opening/saving takes a lot of time ... do you have any tipps how to resolve that problem?
thanks and br,Zsolt
Glad you found it helpful. The slow file will be caused by your formulas. You should use Power Query to import your data to Excel and put the formulas in there. It's far more efficient to calculate the columns in Power Query than it is in the Excel grid.
My question is, what is power BI, LOL!
:-) this video demonstrates what Power BI can do: ruclips.net/video/Z2t7l8b1uWU/видео.html
My thoughts are power bi is more built for corporate individuals who need to see dynamic data without opening a file or reading an email. Excel is more for the lower level deep diving type information where a person is trying to analyze a specific group of people. Both are good and worth learning both given the opportunity. Great vid.
Thank you!
Bi is definitely more powerful - easily (that is the advantage - ease).
But it fails.
It fails because it is not as ubiquitous as Excel being locked into a Microsoft requirement of working in a company or educational setting. For me this is a fatal flaw. Having to have one of those accounts to publish and share your Bi work is non-starter. Excel doesn't have that problem. I can build reports and dashboards and share them without having to be locked into having a company or an educational account.
Excel wins for a high number of applications. Most common dashboards it’s much easier and the cost and common knowledge is even more reason.
Just watched the comparison between Power BI and Excel. It saved me many hours of research and helped to make a decision right away regarding which platform to use for my project. great job!
So pleased it was helpful, Faisal!
Excellent comparison Mynda! I think you’ve just about nailed it: ultimately, it’s ‘horses for courses’ and it really depends on individual use case and business context. A key word you used was “adhoc” and that really describes the key differential for me: Excel is my daily driver, I’ll use it for quick analysis and tactical solutions. On the other hand, Power BI is the tool I will use to construct firmer, more strategic solutions which have a longer shelf life.
From a personal perspective, I like how Power BI tidies my workspace; instead of 6 or 7 spreadsheets my data is consolidated within the engine. Clearly source files are still referenced but these can exist elsewhere and aren’t a distraction. One drawback is probably performance: Excel is rapid whereas Power BI can get a little sluggish. That can be frustrating, but again it’s about aligning the right tool for the right objective.
Great vid and thank you so much for making it 😊
Thanks, D L. And thanks for sharing your perspectives on the two tools. There's a lot to be said for a tidy workspace, especially when building reports.
instablaster...
Very comprehensive video, thanks. The biggest difficulty I've found with power bi is getting people to use it! I wish they'd designed it more tightly with Excel too, with new features released to both at the same time and aligned in terms of presentation and function (slicers especially!). I like the functionality of power pivot for example, but it's ugly and uninviting. In my opinion they should have integrated with power query into a single interface and made it look like the power bi experience. It would reduce the learning curve between the two. Similarly, data connections should be exactly the same whether using bi or Excel, shareable between the two. The only difference should be whether the users choose to use Excel or power bi to present their data. You're right about Excel formulae being more advanced, however without the ability to integrate with data in the data model, they're not that flexible for working with dashboards created using it. I've often found myself creating a convoluted Dax measure that would be extremely simple in Excel just to utilise the slicer.
Thanks, Rico. It's great to hear your perspective and experience. Unfortunately, because Excel is a very established program it is not as easy to update and make changes. Whereas Power BI being completely new from the ground up, is more agile and able to have new features added without breaking existing features more easily, hence why the pace of development in Power BI is rapid compared to Excel. That's not to say they can't implement some of your ideas, but goes to explain why they don't release new features at the same time.
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub agreed. Not that changes to excel aren't happening at a pace too. It'll be interesting to see the direction of travel in the coming months and years.
This is not a fair comparison.
Since you have mentioned VBA for one area, (refresh), you should include in the comparisons in all the other areas.
Excel, coupled with VBA, can probably do everything Power BI can, plus a lot more, though admittedly not as fast.
Also powerpivot in excel is not restricted to the 64 bit version.
The 32 bit version of Excel also has powerpivot.
"Excel, coupled with VBA, can probably do everything Power BI can, plus a lot more" I disagree and I think you also have doubts given the use of 'probably' in that sentence. Perhaps you don't know Power BI as well as you know VBA. Sure, VBA can do a lot of cool stuff, but it's not the solution to having Power BI functionality in Excel.
Power Pivot with 32-bit Excel is not recommended and suffers terribly with performance, even when using relatively small datasets. I don't like to set people up for failure, so better to be up front and make it clear that 64-bit is really the minimum requirement. By all means, use 32-bit if that's all you're allowed to have, but it comes with a warning.
Very very good! one small remark: True that the visuals in Excel don't interact. But I realy like the fact that if you use multiple slicers for one table to explore the data, these slices do interact. After selecting one or more options from one slicer, you can see which options of the other slicer are available. I heard that this option is quite memory intensive by the way....
Yes, I like this feature too.
Awesome! My manager just approved for me to go ahead with your powerBi course. I am thinking to do it during the Christmas break.
Fabulous! I look forward to teaching you all about Power BI and its wonders :-)
How much is the course for? If like to join too.
@@777you7tube - just Google it. The package price is vary depends on your need.
Brilliant and accurate analysis Mynda. Thank you very much for sharing your professional experience.
Glad you enjoyed it, Ivan!
You are the master and I send everyone I know with excel questions to your channel.
Wow, thanks so much!
The learning curve is really amazing charting. If presentation in form of slides other than video, it would save us more time to read through...
Glad it was helpful :-)
@MyOnlineTrainingHub & @Mynda --- Another awesome video! This is a fair & authoritative review of both the fantastic tools - XL and PBI! Super cool that you were able to give the pros & cons of both systems, and also wear the right T-shirts! Appreciate this! Take care and stay safe!
Thanks so much, Cherian! Yes, lucky I had both t-shirts :-D
The comparison is made only for dashboard and report. Excel is used by many for storing and organising data. So in that sense, I will just go with Excel.
Yes, this was purely comparing the two tools for building Dashboards because essentially that's the purpose of Power BI. Nothing compares to Excel for other uses like storing and organising data, and ad-hoc analysis.
So, there's no clear winner?
We’ll there is if you have specific requirements and constraints, but if you’re flexible then you can have the best of both worlds. 😊
Great tutorial....how I wish you can do a tutorial oh how to build the integrated financial statements using power bi and excel power query model...
Glad you liked it, Samuel.
Wish you would have summed up with a pros cons overall at the end. Too much this feature is in Power BI, but it’s also in Excel…. Doesn’t easily highlight differences
There's a summary table here: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/excel-dashboards-vs-power-bi-dashboards
I don't know if I'm the only one, but watching this videos make me realize how stupid my coworkers are and that makes me just sad. There are clearly places where using Power BI makes no sense at all, but people just do what they are told. In my workplace people use SAS to make horrible documents containing exclusively tables in RTF format. Only for the people who need the stats to transfer those horribles tables to Excel in order to do their jobs. There are literally hundreds of thousands of lines of code to explore always the same data, over and over again, only with different programs, usually containing hundreds of lines of code each. Everything could have been a couple of spreadsheets with zero programming. The current structure takes days to calculate what excel does instantly with pivot tables. For me, it is a nightmare in which I could never imagined I would be, but it's secure and it pays well.
An opportunity for you to make a difference, Breno!
What about Tableau and Google Sheets? I always thought Tableau was compared to Power BI, and Google Sheets compared to Excel.
Yes, they are and that would be another comparison you could do.
Very helpful and concise highlight of each tool’s features. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
muy claro y sencillo, por eso veo tus videos Mynda, thanks a lot, nice!
Gracias, Leonidas!
I'm trying to create a plan vs. actual from a Quickbooks Online export of data. I've got the Power Query all set up to eradicate the mess, but can't figure out how to get the plan numbers in there. The exported data is actual transactions. The plan data is independent of it. If I were to add the column during the Power Query set up and manually enter the plan numbers, it would be overwritten the next time I update the file. I'm on a Mac so can't use the Window Folder update method. Is there any other way to get the plan data to play nicely with the transaction data?
Hi Deb, great to hear you're working with Power Query to get your data. You can merge the actual and budget tables together in Power Query: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/excel-power-query-vlookup
Hey i want to ask you something right now i am learning ms excel from basic to advanced level and Vba too so I want to know from you that after completing my excel course should i go with power BI or excel till vba is sufficient for me...please reply
After mastering Excel, I would learn Power Query, then Power Pivot, then Power BI. Power Query and Power Pivot are used in both Excel and Power BI, so you get double the use of these tools. Much more worthwhile than learning VBA.
With work around
In excel we can restrict data using VBA or Power Query for users.
Ex: Fetch the Employee ID of the user at workbook open event and filter the data. If the data is in sheet it can be very hidden.
Thanks for sharing, Pavan. Those are great ideas, but users need to know that VBA is not super secure and with a quick Google search you'll find a video on how to remove VBA protection.
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub True that. 👍
very good thanks but i have some issues about the learning curve for example visuals i feel it is very easy to learn in Power BI, also the data preparation i can get huge value from power BI even though i do not do data preparation in power bi environment like unpivot i can do it in excel for example
Great to hear you find Power BI visuals easy. Excel Pivot charts are easy too...after all, they're based on the same logic as Power BI i.e. a PivotTable. It's just in Power BI you don't see the PivotTable, only the field list and chart areas. The exact same data preparation tools in Power BI are in Excel, so that 'huge value' you talk about is in both tools. That's one of the main points I was trying to emphasize.
Thanks Mynda for this!
It would be good to know which versions of Excel support PowerPivot. I use Excel 2013 and cannot find PowerPivot to enable. However, I have installed PowerQuery.
Thanks!
Hi George, this post explains what versions support Power Pivot: support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/where-is-power-pivot-aa64e217-4b6e-410b-8337-20b87e1c2a4b
Very usefull, i recall from last presentation on Power BI the monthly subcribtion costs, at $10 per month, does on at face value appear to be quite high if you have ad hoc users, may access 1 / 2 report dask boards only. Interestig to know what corporate take-up is and if other subcribers to channel, would invest time in learning Power BI, but are not doing so as the licence cost is barrier to adopt and use.
Yes, the licence fee can quickly add-up and isn't justified for occasional use.
One workaround on this to set up a guest account and give 'report account' credentials to users who need to see the report. Just a M365 account is enough for this, no Power BI pro license. Within your company's tenant even M365 subscription not needed. So there are alternatives:)
Excelente comparación, saludos!
Gracias!
lots of reporting analyst jobs with power bi outthere and puts you in another class but an online course won't give expertise alone.
Absolutely, Paul. An online class is a great place to start and get up and running, but practice is required for expertise.
Mynda, Beautiful black shirt. You look great.
😁 Thanks, Arturo!
One important pros for Excel is that you have full access to update the filtered data (i.e. add tags, Bulk update), while Power BI is read only.
Indeed :-)
The personalized visual feature for power bi is making it more flexible for users now.
Thank you, im from indonesia, i already subscribe, thank you
Great to hear, Garis!
Hello Mindy,
I work ad a non-profit organization as a volunteer and i am building a dashboard wat needs to be seen by a number of peaple. I use one vsc file as data source. What us the best way to show this online and be able to update it. Without making it cost a lot.
Thank you for this video.
Marius. Leergeld.nl
Hello Madam I had this intresting doubt.
I am currently working on a transactional data so the data has duplicate records. This time instead of removing the records in power query . I want to see all the duplicate records data of a company in a single row.
Example:
1|A
1|B
2|A
1|C
2|B
Output: 1|A|B|C
2|A|B.
Great as usual. But AFAIK to be always up-to-date with excel, a time based subscription of office 365 is required like in power bi, so this extra cost maybe could also be mentioned. Regardless, it guys in my organization claim that both office 365 and power bi are now subscribed through cloud based licensing, which they say isn't secure enough in comparison with licensed hard copies. Thanks again!!
Yes, if you want to always have the latest version then the Office/Microsoft 365 subscription is the best option, but it's not more expensive than buying a perpetual license every 3 years. In fact, it is often cheaper depending on the license you choose. Either way, you've already paid for Excel, so there's no extra cost.
As for the cloud based licensing not being secure, I have no idea why they would think this as there's no basis for it. There is absolutely no difference in 'security' with a perpetual license vs the 365 license.
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub thank you very much. Extremely useful information again.
Important to note that IOS excel does NOT support slicers so you can build a great interactive dashboard in Excel using a Windows machine which won’t work on your MacBook or ipad. Happy to stand corrected maybe another video?🙏
Correct, Peter, but you can always embed the dashboard in a web page and it will work on any device 😉
Thanks Mynda, great suggestion wish I’d thought of that!😬
I'm diving into power bi world and it's amazing
Great to hear. Have fun with it, Pedro!
Awesome presentation and comparison, thanks a lot.
Glad it helped, Hossam!
Where is the merch link when you need one.
Really good comparison where we actually talk about when and why to use the specific tool needed.
Glad you liked it, Sameer!
Once again, a perfect explanation. Thanks a lot!
Thanks so much!
Thbanks! Also if you have no values, you could not make use of pivot table in excel.
If you have no number values you can still create PivotTables, if that's what you mean.
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub yes but not sure how. Do you have a recording that shows that with multi columns please?
No, but hopefully this PivotTable tutorial will point you in the right direction: ruclips.net/video/vQlFiLUaw4k/видео.html
WAIT? HOW ARE THEY USING EXCEL CHARTS IN POWERPOINT??
Please see this tutorial on embedding Excel in PowerPoint: ruclips.net/video/WgpfiVGs6qc/видео.html
Is to go online to fetch printout
Your 11 min video saved my 8 hrs of learning Power BI, I have already learnt lots on Excel ranging from complex formulae, pivot & dashboards. Learning the same on a different software with much less flexibility and unfamiliarity is only going to be much frustrating, time consuming & less output. I will instead hone my skills on Excel further with VBA. Many thanks.
So glad it was helpful 😊
How to do that custom clicks in excel where we could mimic the cross filtering of power bi??
It's explained in this video, Avi: ruclips.net/video/qFpnUBNUcsM/видео.htmlrel=0
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub thank you Myrna :)
Oops I spelled ur name wrong
So sorry about that Mynda 😀
Glad you didn’t say none😬
Super guao...
Gracias!
Hi Mynda! After watching your great videos I build in Excel a dashboard. I created the data in Query, that results in a table. From the table I created Pivot tables. I have noticed that my pivot tables do not refresh with the most recent data even if I refresh the table, refresh the powerpivot, or refresh all data. I also tried unchecking Enable background refresh and still it does not work. Do you have any idea on how to solve this? Thanks a lot!
Congratulations on building your own dashboard! If your data from Power Query is loaded into an Excel Table in the worksheet and from there you built PivotTables then you need to refresh twice, once for the query to load the data into the Table and a second time to update the PivotTables. It's better to keep the query as connection only and build the PivotTable directly from the query. This resolves the double refresh requirement.
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub Thank you so much for such a quick reply. I took your advice and kept it as connection only and now is ok. All the best!
Amazing and useful thanks soooo much !
Glad you liked it!!
Now Now which one is your choice?
:-) for dashboards, Power BI is great. However, the lack of formatting options is super frustrating coming from an Excel background where you can manipulate charts to do almost anything you want. Of course, you can build your own custom visuals with Power BI, but that's a complicated solution to something that should be easy. Of course, Power BI gets updates every month and those niggles will be ironed out over time.
do you have a tutorial on the grpahs around the 4 minute mark where you're using the bar graph as a slicer ?
I think you mean this one: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/cross-highlight-excel-charts
@@MyOnlineTrainingHub thann you
another great video. Would be good to see more power bi videos also some basic VBA videos would be good.
Thanks. Will keep it in mind.
I am sorry but I will discuss with this "huge selection of charts" in Power BI. Since 3 years I am using ONLY default one. Why? Because I used to use the customised one and I lost all of them with new version of PBI. Creators didnt support it anymore. So I had to rebuild my reports which cost time and money ofc.
For me Visuals Excel >>>>> Power BI.
Yes, customised visuals come with a risk.
Hello maam
I just started my MBA in Business Intelligence
from National Forensic Science University Gandhinagar.
My graduation was in LIFE Science ( Microbiology ),
please guide me on where to begin
( Like what is the essential tool that I should master that industry needs? )
Thank you For your awesome content :)
Hi Piyush, Power BI is a great tool to master for BI. You can take my Power BI course here: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/power-bi-course
I have a Sales table which include sales return, when I calculate total sales value its calculate sales return, but when I calculate Sales without GST that time not calculate properly. What Can I Do?
Please post your question and sample Excel file on our forum where we can help you further: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/excel-forum
Thanks once again for teaching and sharing valuable content, you make hard things easy!
Glad to hear that, Domingo!
There's not a monthly subscription cost with PBI when you use PBIRS. Excel doesn't compare to PBI IMO. Security alone is reason enough to only use PBI if you're making enterprise level reports or dashboards.
PBIRS still has associated costs because you require a server and IT professionals to run it. I agree, Power BI has more sophisticated features, but not everyone has it, so Excel is still a great alternative.
Thank you for your great tutorials!
Glad you like them!
I can create much more powerfull Dashboard in excel than PowerBI.
Question is - what next? How I can share it with management/customer?
And in this matter answer is only one - Power BI.
True!
Well Done Mynda,
Sure, It Was Useful
Great to hear, Shakira!
Excellent work! This resonates with my opinion too.
Power BI has a really steep learning curve and the costs for Pro subscription are somewhat prohibitive. My industry (Engineering and Construction Projects) has a bias towards Excel as most professionals already use other software tools for functions such as Project Management or Procurement or F&A etc. and prefer to use Excel to do quick analysis on a data dump. Probably this is just due to the way this Industry works and not a comment on Power BI in the Excel vs. Power BI debate.
Glad it was helpful 🙏
Soooo... what's the verdict?
It's explained in the video. It depends on your needs and budget.
"Thank you so much, for sharing this concise and informative Power BI video. It has the potential to make a significant impact on both my personal and professional life. I truly appreciate your contribution!"
So pleased it was helpful!
It was an amazing video
You totally answered my doubts!!
So pleased it was helpful, Thaila!
Hello, I have query, if possible can you please help me.
I have project is converting excel dashboard to Power BI. I stuck in adding time in secondary Y axis. I want time as it is. Whenever i tried adding in the line value, it's converting to count or average etc.. i need no calculation.
Try setting it to show Max or Min instead of count/sum.
Kindly assist. I have very many CSV files containing share prices which I need to merge in power query. each file contains data for a specific company. They all have the date column from 2010 to 2020. I want to have a final single output file in which the first column is the date , next column is the company, and then share price.(I.E extract only company and share prices from all other csv files since dates are the same--and discard other irrelevant columns) NB I do not want to append each file at the bottom of another but instead use common column headers. for instance the company column should contain all companies. and a given row should show the date, company and share price. Thanks.
Hi Jackson, you can use Power Query to do this. Here is an introduction to Power Query tutorial: ruclips.net/video/L4BuUzccLpo/видео.html
If you want interactivity and online sharing -> PowerBI
If you want flexibility, offline access or pdf exports ->Excel
Nice distinction, Federico. You can also export Power BI reports to PDF.
What is the roadmap for Excel? I would think that the Excel team different from the PowerBI team and usually Excel would introduce some new features for visualization as they have done in the past.
Yes, the teams are different but they work closely together, especially since both tools use Power Query and Power Pivot. Currently a lot of effort is going into bringing Excel online up to speed and not a lot on chart development.
If possible, could you show a video about how you come up with the WHY. I look for metrics but have difficulty asking the question or explaining what is needed to get the info I want. Just thought you must have the analytical thinking to say "I want to see how much an employee is costing me to do "x"?" How you go about thinking of the charts and comparison to get the result. hopefully I"m making sense. PS...excellent simply to use videos.
Thanks, Brad! There are a fairly standard set of rules for which charts suit what type of data/scenario. I have a chart recipe eBook you can download from here that might help: www.myonlinetraininghub.com/workbook-downloads
Hello Please should I be advanced in EXCEL before learning POWER BI?
Thanks for the video
Not necessarily, but advanced Excel skills are more in demand than Power BI skills, so the choice is yours.
Excellent comparison.
One remark, though : 9:37, Power Pivot in Excel 32bit can also deal with millions of rows, it depends on how you build up your model.
Yes, but I don't recommend 32-bit. I've have endless emails from people complaining that their model is slow/crashing and it's usually because they're using 32-bit.
I think the reason why people prefer to use Excel because they’re used to it.
I prefer Excel with Power Query since I can initiate impromptu checking within the Excel check to test and check the formula.
I agree. Excel is familiar and there is no additional cost to use it since most people already have Excel.
Thank you, just got hooked to your channel recently...tons of great stuff there. I have just one remark regarding the consumers of PowerBI dashboard having to have a licence too- I have been told by the IT department at my organization that if the dashboard is published (by a Pro or Premium user) into a workspace created by a Premium user, the clients don't need to have a licence. However, if a Pro user publishes into a workspace created by Pro (for example the My Space of a Pro user), then the end users will need to have a licence to be able to see the dashboard.
Correct, Premium licencing is different and quite complicated. The point is, it costs $$$ to publish dashboards.
Awesome summary
I still prefer using pandas to clean and manipulate data however I would really like to then have a this loaded onto power BI for visuals .Thanks for the really smart presentation 👍🏿
My pleasure!
Porównanie możliwości i zastosowania Excel i Power Bi bardzo przydatne w podejmowaniu decyzji o wyborze programu do przedstawiania wyników. Dzięki za tak dokładne porównanie.👍
You're welcome 😊
Hi Mynda. Great analysis and insights! Thanks for sharing :)) Thumbs up!!
Thanks so much, Wayne!
Its very useful,thanks and can u tell which is better bcz i want study so please
Great to hear 😊