Excel Power View retirement: what does it mean for your business?

Five years after the new feature development concluded, Microsoft has revealed the Excel Power View retirement plan. Businesses have a short window to migrate their content over to a new product or service. 

While Power View remained in Excel for Windows devices, the Silverlight framework will no longer be supported by October 12th. Meaning you will be unable to create or edit new reports. After this date, Microsoft will be rolling out an incremental update to disable the use of the product altogether.

So, what are your options in this Power View end of life scenario?

What was Power View?

Power View was an interactive visualisation tool that provides users with a drag and drop interface to quickly and easily create data visualisation in their Excel workbooks. With over one billion Microsoft Office users globally, Excel has become the professional standard in data management.

After Power View retires you will still be able to use Excel to manage your data, but you will have to use another software to create the same high quality visualisations that Power View offered.

So if you haven’t started looking, now is the perfect time to weigh up your options and see what works for you. Here are some of the top alternatives:

Power View alternatives

Instead of using Power View, various other Microsoft services and products can help your business achieve the same objective. Most of your specific reporting needs can be met using the native Excel charting tools.

In the announcement, Microsoft recommended that all Power View users switch to Power BI desktop, a free localised application.

You can import your Excel workbooks into Power BI Desktop to create data visualisations. 

Power BI desktop isn’t the only business intelligence tool on the market, here are three other Power View alternatives;

Gather and visualise with Excel

Excel is a staple in most office environments and can be an excellent data collection and analysis tool. After Power View retires from Excel, you can still continue to use Excel in it’s native environment to collect data and display in basic reports.

Excel is part of the Microsoft 365 licensing suite, meaning you can import data from external sources like Power Query in Excel and use it to create visualisations, like charts, tables, and reports. Using Power Query, you can locate and combine data from different sources and shape the data to suit your needs.

More cloud capabilities with Power BI Desktop

Power BI lets you manage your security settings and users within the same interface. There’s no need for external tools to support data compliance and regulatory standards. Power BI also has the security of Azure Active Directory (AAD) built-in.

You can migrate your existing Excel sheets into Power BI by doing the following:

• open Power BI Desktop
• select file, import
• open Power Query
• then choose an Excel workbook
• import it into the PBI desktop.

Alongside the standard security options, we offer a range of trusted Power BI data security services. From proactive threat monitoring to continued security reviews, we’ll help you access all the security advantages of Power BI.

Connect and collaborate with SharePoint Online

You may already be using Excel and Power View to create immersive reports in SharePoint. But with the Power View retirement plan announcement, it’s worth considering the other visualisation tools SharePoint offer.

Migrating to SharePoint Online allows you to share workbooks internally and to external sources outside your organisation. As well as create beautiful data visualisations using Power Pivot.

With SharePoint, you can view your business’ data without having to resort to basic Excel spreadhseets or charts. The SharePoint Chart Web Part enables your employees to build powerful, visually impressive charts with your organisations data as well as utilising external business data.

Our Microsoft 365 E5 licences gives you the power to use Excel, SharePoint, and Power BI in your business processes. As well as protect your data from potential cyber threats with Azure Information protection.

What’s your next step?

Choosing your following data analysis software is not an easy choice to make. Rely on Influential Software, the Microsoft Gold Partners, to support your next step in business. We provide consultancy, migration and implementation. Meaning you’ve got end-to-end support from a team of skilled techs who have proved their worth time and time again.