In this blog post I will share my experience of trying to install and setup PowerView with Excel 2013 Preview. PowerView is a new self-service BI Tool that was introduced with SQL Server 2012 having it with Excel 2013 makes self-service BI even more interesting!
So I started with Installing Office 2013 and you can find more about it using the following link Excel 2013 Preview download and install
and I tried to use the new PowerView button but I got this message:
"You need to enable the Power View add-in to use this feature"
Scary message but fortunately there is enable button and I just clicked it
I am using new PC so I don't have everything installed and Powerview is Silverlight based (in Excel 2013?) so in my case I need to install Silverlight as I got the following message:
"Power View requires Silverlight Please install Silverlight and then click Reload to try again"
I clicked Install and it opened my Chrome browse. I followed the instructions and it said Silverlight is already installed! I tried to reload it in Excel and it didn't help. Then it occurred to me that it is Microsoft so why don't I try to Install Silverlight using Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) so I managed to copy link from Chrome which was http://go2.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=116053 pasted it to IE9 and it installed Silverlight again! (in IE9). I clicked reload in Excel 2013 and it worked!
Below is screen I got after reload
I checked all options and it seems I don't have any options to connect to some kind of source. I do however know that in Excel 2010 PowerView required Tabular Model (PowerPivot model) and I see that PowerPivot tab is not enabled so first I will enable PowerPivot in Excel 2013. For more information on how to do that visit Excel 2013 enable PowerPivot Add-in
Upgrade PowerPivot to Excel 2013
If you are not using previous versions of PowerPivot then you can skip these steps...Remember it seems you do need PowerPivot model in order to use PowerView in Excel 2013 Preview.
I've tried to start PowerView but it asked me to upgrade so I clicked OK button
Unfortunately I got this ugly 0x800A03EC error but as I know Microsoft fairly well now I thought maybe I'll try to upgrade using "different path"
I clicked PowerPivot Tab and clicked Manage and got the same message that tells me to upgrade and clicked ok
But this time it worked! and I could upgrade my PowerPivot model by pressing OK button
After upgrade I was asked to reopen (it's nice for Microsoft didn't forget to mention it) and I clicked YES button
Next I went to Insert Tab and clicked PowerView button (First picture in this blog post shows it. The screenshot below is what I got after I've clicked it!)
So you can see after click PowerView button (in Insert Tab) my screen now shows PowerView Tab and shows my Model Fields (My model was created very quickly so I still need to tidy it up!)
I've played with PowerView and it is the BEST self service BI tool I have seen so far!! It is so easy to do everything and believe me that was my first 5 minutes with PowerView!
So instead of showing you screenshots of what I did I decided to do Video Demo and hopefully I will publish it on our blog soon!
Take care
Emil
Consulting & Training Company
