Stop Lying: Your Power BI Reports Always End Up in Excel

Power BI dashboards promise sleek insights, but somehow... everything still ends up in a spreadsheet. Here’s why—and how to finally break free.

Author

Glenda Carnate
September 06, 2025

Read time: 2.5 minutes

It’s the classic story.
You spend hours building a beautiful Power BI dashboard.
Interactive. Real-time. Slicer heaven.
And then comes the request:

“Can you export it to Excel?”

Of course. Let me just… ruin everything.

And here’s the reality: Excel isn’t going anywhere. Nearly 96% of finance teams still use spreadsheets for planning, and 93% still rely on them for reporting... even when modern BI tools like Power BI are available. (Multishoring, 2025)

So after 30 hours of modeling, the final deliverable is… one .xlsx file. Spreadsheet betrayal at its finest.

5 Brutal Truths About Dashboards vs. Excel:

1. Dashboards Are Rockets → They’re built for speed, interactivity, and live data.

2. Excel Is Gravity → No matter how sleek the dashboard, someone always drags it back down into rows and columns.

3. Exports Hide Insight → Copy-pasting kills dynamic filters, drill-throughs, and half the logic you spent weeks building.

4. Familiarity Wins → Power BI feels like Tesla. Excel feels like your uncle’s truck. Guess which one your boss trusts more.

5. Humans Lag Behind → Technology evolves fast. People? Not so much.

Key Takeaways:

→ Educate stakeholders, show what gets lost in the export.
→ Track exports; visibility helps governance and adoption.
→ Build a bridge; create simple summary tabs in Power BI for Excel lovers.
→ Accept reality; Excel will never die. But you can limit the damage.

👉 LIKE if your dashboard has ever been flattened into Excel.

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