Yep, good call. In Australia most government agencies have E5, and they are often surprised when I tell them they already have Pro licenses. Also not for profits can apply for cheaper licenses. I think it's $4USD /person / month
I'd say the user interface is much better in Power BI. Power BI also does a much better job integrating Power Query and the data model. In Excel it's annoying that you can't get out of Power Query to check other things without closing it down first or using clunky workarounds.
I used to use Excel almost exclusively but I’ve moved all of our data capture to sharepoint lists (with a few legacy spreadsheets) and now use PowerBI for all modelling and visualisation. DAX is a learning curve coming from Excel, but I barely use Excel at all any more.
I tend to weigh choice depending on product longevity, and that is a key requirement I always clarify. My first principles are: tactical / ops = Excel; strategic = Power BI. What I’ve come across in the past is where a developer invests time + effort in creating a beautiful Power BI report - but adds no value, as the customer just wanted a pivot. I also consider whether the customer is familiar with Power BI; will they require training; do they know how to drill etc. All of that can increase request overhead. But I agree with you Wyn, it’s vitally important to have strong competency with both products. The real expertise is knowing which tool produces the best outcome 😊
Great summary! After getting comfortable with PBI, I found myself even using it for some adhoc work. Data validation especially. When working with larger datasets, Excel responds slowly and locks up more. Typically don't have those issues with PBI.
I agree the performance of Power BI is generally better / less buggy. One thing I should have called out is that Power BI is more forgiving when you make a late change. E.g. Changing a table name in a power pivot model breaks everything
Great summary and clear concise comparisons. Just a personal view, but Excel wins hands down for me all the time but I can see how others may find BI useful. On presentation and analytics, the endless seamless use of shapes/cut paste from powerpoint templaate, neumorpisms etc can make for a really exiting and visual dashboard with excel. Automation I find easier with sumifs,sumproduct and filter as small examples as well as VBA/user forms and much easier to control network user access with excel speadsheets as well as attach to emails etc. Maybe I should delve into BI a little more but I find Excel so powerful and easier to manipulate and more importantly share. Appreciate the video and others may find BI more useful as I guess both are, but your explanation was really really helpful. I'm looking forward to having Excel Co pilot installed on my work Excel licence in Nov and should also be a game changer. I am hoping you manage to upload a couple videos on co pilot as I watch a lot of your videos and find your easy to follow examples and soothing voice extremely productive.
Power BI is nice when you have a table of relatively well prepared data. I really don't enjoy DAX, it's genuinely tough to mentally navigate, and I say that as someone who mainly works as a programmer! Also, it's great connecting to a bona fide database type source that is locked in terms of its tabular structure.
The amazing differentiator between power bi and competitor products is the built in data extraction and cleansing tool - Power Query - truly life changing technology if you have messy data ( which is most people )
Excellent summary of the scenarios/situations where PBI would be the better choice. My company is not new but we are very immature in terms of business processes and governed operational data. Many of our "reporting" initiatives are actually experiments in reporting; in that context I find Excel's (IMO) greater flexibility more useful than Power BI's scale and power. The scenario I try to steer my company away from is spending significant money on a custom solution before the real business and reporting requirements have been thought out and tested. The model I try to drive is to use Excel to create "prototype" analytical and reporting tools, used primarily to drive my clients/users to more clearly specify the purposes and parameters of their business processes and their key indicators. Once a process and its analytics have established a reasonable long-term equilibrium state we move to other, better tools for data collection, storage, and reporting. Those other tools might be purchased custom solutions or "low code" solutions we develop internally with components of the "power stack."
In addition to @Geert Delmulle : Excel is also better in Monte Carlo Simulation for Risk Analysis.... Thanks also for the hot tip how to find the Excel version 2301 So logical but I did not know...!!
I'm on the Insider channel, but when I click on What's New, it says last update was November 18, 2022 for months. MS hasn't given a clear response either. Thanks for the Version tip. I'm on 2304!
This is a really useful comparison for me, thank you. My challenge is to make data come alive in varying operational environments, usually using the technology available or 'free'. I am currently struggling with having a central data set updated by 'admin', with other teams then needing to refresh their view of the data. From your video it sounds like Power BI would be better for this use case, but not sure the additional licence cost would be welcome, so need to come up with a way of doing it through Excel.... At least I can see a fair comparison of the two - great resource.
What about the email requirement? I and a lot of other 1-person operations have been locked out of PowerBI because we use gmail or yahoo accounts, and we work with clients who are also small operations using gmail or yahoo. Yes, there have been workarounds but nothing as easy as putting an Excel file in a DropBox folder, sharing it with a client and then removing myself from the sharing when the project is done. Is this still an issue? Is it time to revisit PowerBI?
@@AccessAnalytic Well, Excel has a Solver, and Power BI does not. So, in Excel you can solve or optimise a goal function, where the variables need to satisfy constraints. It’s a default add-in.
So you don't need a gateway for a web API. Gateways are for onprem files, on your hard drive. If you are using O365, you can pass the URL of the location of the file in the API in as a web source. Any other API i would parse with Python, as PBI cant handle complex APIs
Both products contain Power Query, Data Model, DAX, Charts and are used to make informed decisions. This is what I'm comparing, and real-life experience brings up this comparison and decision regularly.
About the Power BI Pro license. If you are on the 365 E5 the Power BI Pro license is included
Yep, good call. In Australia most government agencies have E5, and they are often surprised when I tell them they already have Pro licenses.
Also not for profits can apply for cheaper licenses. I think it's $4USD /person / month
I'd say the user interface is much better in Power BI. Power BI also does a much better job integrating Power Query and the data model. In Excel it's annoying that you can't get out of Power Query to check other things without closing it down first or using clunky workarounds.
Oh yeah, good call - ability to have PQ open and still interact is great!
You can.. Just have create a new instance of Excel..
@@shounaksen3336 true, holding ALT while launching a new version of Excel is the workaround, but I would prefer it if you didn't have to do this
I used to use Excel almost exclusively but I’ve moved all of our data capture to sharepoint lists (with a few legacy spreadsheets) and now use PowerBI for all modelling and visualisation. DAX is a learning curve coming from Excel, but I barely use Excel at all any more.
Interesting progression, I think many are moving the same way.
Isn't DAX also used by Excel Data Model?
Yes, that’s where it appeared first back in 2009
I tend to weigh choice depending on product longevity, and that is a key requirement I always clarify. My first principles are: tactical / ops = Excel; strategic = Power BI.
What I’ve come across in the past is where a developer invests time + effort in creating a beautiful Power BI report - but adds no value, as the customer just wanted a pivot.
I also consider whether the customer is familiar with Power BI; will they require training; do they know how to drill etc. All of that can increase request overhead.
But I agree with you Wyn, it’s vitally important to have strong competency with both products. The real expertise is knowing which tool produces the best outcome 😊
Good points well made there
Great summary! After getting comfortable with PBI, I found myself even using it for some adhoc work. Data validation especially. When working with larger datasets, Excel responds slowly and locks up more. Typically don't have those issues with PBI.
I agree the performance of Power BI is generally better / less buggy.
One thing I should have called out is that Power BI is more forgiving when you make a late change. E.g. Changing a table name in a power pivot model breaks everything
@AccessAnalytic Absolutely! Very frustrating.
Great summary and clear concise comparisons.
Just a personal view, but Excel wins hands down for me all the time but I can see how others may find BI useful. On presentation and analytics, the endless seamless use of shapes/cut paste from powerpoint templaate, neumorpisms etc can make for a really exiting and visual dashboard with excel. Automation I find easier with sumifs,sumproduct and filter as small examples as well as VBA/user forms and much easier to control network user access with excel speadsheets as well as attach to emails etc. Maybe I should delve into BI a little more but I find Excel so powerful and easier to manipulate and more importantly share. Appreciate the video and others may find BI more useful as I guess both are, but your explanation was really really helpful.
I'm looking forward to having Excel Co pilot installed on my work Excel licence in Nov and should also be a game changer. I am hoping you manage to upload a couple videos on co pilot as I watch a lot of your videos and find your easy to follow examples and soothing voice extremely productive.
Thank you. Yes I’m not sure I’ll be able to get co pilot, but I’m looking into how to get it.
Power BI is nice when you have a table of relatively well prepared data. I really don't enjoy DAX, it's genuinely tough to mentally navigate, and I say that as someone who mainly works as a programmer!
Also, it's great connecting to a bona fide database type source that is locked in terms of its tabular structure.
The amazing differentiator between power bi and competitor products is the built in data extraction and cleansing tool - Power Query - truly life changing technology if you have messy data ( which is most people )
Great summary. My 'go to' is PBI, but Excel is great for those quick ad hoc queries.
Thanks for your thoughts
Excellent summary of the scenarios/situations where PBI would be the better choice.
My company is not new but we are very immature in terms of business processes and governed operational data. Many of our "reporting" initiatives are actually experiments in reporting; in that context I find Excel's (IMO) greater flexibility more useful than Power BI's scale and power. The scenario I try to steer my company away from is spending significant money on a custom solution before the real business and reporting requirements have been thought out and tested.
The model I try to drive is to use Excel to create "prototype" analytical and reporting tools, used primarily to drive my clients/users to more clearly specify the purposes and parameters of their business processes and their key indicators. Once a process and its analytics have established a reasonable long-term equilibrium state we move to other, better tools for data collection, storage, and reporting. Those other tools might be purchased custom solutions or "low code" solutions we develop internally with components of the "power stack."
Thanks. Sounds like a good approach to me
If we look at the whole picture and the total usage there is nothing that is as good as Excel
So many products can do specific tasks better than Excel, but northing has the breadth of capability and ease of learning curve as Excel
@@AccessAnalytic YUP! "Excel is the second best tool for everything."
Excellent explanation for the differences between the two great languages.... Thank you..
You are welcome!
In addition to @Geert Delmulle : Excel is also better in Monte Carlo Simulation for Risk Analysis.... Thanks also for the hot tip how to find the Excel version 2301 So logical but I did not know...!!
Thanks for your thoughts
I'm on the Insider channel, but when I click on What's New, it says last update was November 18, 2022 for months. MS hasn't given a clear response either. Thanks for the Version tip. I'm on 2304!
Ah yeah, good pickup. I have reported it to the Excel team
Both are greats products but I think excel has slight edge. For e.g I think majority of businesses can operate without PBI but not without excel.
Yep, PowerBI is by no means a replacement for Excel, but can replace / improve certain reporting that was previously being done by Excel or not at all
This is a really useful comparison for me, thank you. My challenge is to make data come alive in varying operational environments, usually using the technology available or 'free'. I am currently struggling with having a central data set updated by 'admin', with other teams then needing to refresh their view of the data. From your video it sounds like Power BI would be better for this use case, but not sure the additional licence cost would be welcome, so need to come up with a way of doing it through Excel.... At least I can see a fair comparison of the two - great resource.
Thank you. Yes you could potentially create a master set in Excel (providing the table(s) has less than 1 million rows)
What about the email requirement?
I and a lot of other 1-person operations have been locked out of PowerBI because we use gmail or yahoo accounts, and we work with clients who are also small operations using gmail or yahoo. Yes, there have been workarounds but nothing as easy as putting an Excel file in a DropBox folder, sharing it with a client and then removing myself from the sharing when the project is done.
Is this still an issue? Is it time to revisit PowerBI?
You still need a Microsoft work or school email address, which normally excel 365 users would have.
ua-cam.com/video/uZyy_qqRPiU/v-deo.html
Great comparison, Wyn, now here’s a pro for Excel: Excel has a “built-in” optimisation solver, whereas Power BI does not.
Thanks Geert. Not sure I follow there?
@@AccessAnalytic Well, Excel has a Solver, and Power BI does not. So, in Excel you can solve or optimise a goal function, where the variables need to satisfy constraints. It’s a default add-in.
Ahh yeah I see what you mean. Yep a l number of differences on those sorts of features.
Great video wyn! Regarding dataflows do u have any video how to setup gateway for web api in dataflows ?
Thanks, no I don’t sorry
So you don't need a gateway for a web API. Gateways are for onprem files, on your hard drive. If you are using O365, you can pass the URL of the location of the file in the API in as a web source. Any other API i would parse with Python, as PBI cant handle complex APIs
You might need it depending on which method you are using: community.powerbi.com/t5/Service/Gateway-for-Web-data-source/m-p/1116228#M96938
More people know how to use Excel - must be an advantage i reckon
True
Thanks Wyn, really usefull!
You’re welcome Sergey
Great 👍👍👍
Thank you! Cheers!
PBI is nowhere near compared to Excel when it comes to creating small, impactful closed ended, reports and Apps using VBA.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts
you are comparing apples to oranges mate, completely different things, there is nothing to compare
Both products contain Power Query, Data Model, DAX, Charts and are used to make informed decisions. This is what I'm comparing, and real-life experience brings up this comparison and decision regularly.