Please make the Power Query editor window (Get Data) non-model. When building complex queries, we often need to go back to Excel to change a worksheet and look at data. Right now, the Power Query editor window takes control over the application, preventing interaction with Excel.

The current behaviour makes it very difficult to do things like the following:
-Mid query, go back and check a worksheet to see exactly what a cell value may be that you want to refer to
-When we have a static table in Excel and are trying to build a query that lands an output in that shape, we can't hop back and forth and check how close we are

In the current implementation, we must close & load the query, check what we need, then re-open the query. Alternately we need to take a screen shot of the needed, or open a second Excel process in order to allow interaction. None of these are good solutions.

It would be awesome if "Power BI Service" is added as a data source under "Get Data" in "Get & Transform Data" in Excel. Though the source availability is already there with "Power BI Publisher Add-in" but it is buggy and hard to deploy on large number of laptops/desktops. Also, it is practically very difficult to educate down the line users about re-enabling this add-in via COM Add-ins in case it disappears from the ribbon which is very frequent in case of this add-in. We have been struggling with this for a long period of time now.

Considering "Power BI Service" as a data source is already available inside Power BI Desktop, this should not be a big challenge for developers to bring the same inside "Get & Transform Data" in Excel.

If Power BI Service as a data source comes to Excel, it will lead to the following incredible benefits:

1. There will not be any need for Publisher Add-in for users who just want to access the dataset sitting in Power BI Service via Excel.




2. Simplification of landscape leading to further affirmation of "Excel and Power BI are better together" tagline which is frequently used by Microsoft.




3. No need to train users on installing publisher add-in in 1000s of laptops and desktops.




4. Nil technical support and maintenance because add-in itself is not required.




5. An incentive for big organizations to move to Excel 2016 due to Power BI Service integration within excel without any need to deploy add-in which is so buggy.




6. Win-win situation for both Microsoft and the clients, as Microsoft will get sales boost in terms of upgrade of Office and clients will save cost on deployment of Publisher add-in, related technical support and user training on installing and using Power BI Publisher.

This is such a low hanging fruit for Microsoft that it should be given priority.

When people in computational biology paste a list of gene names sometimes genes like "SPET8" are in the list. The original value is lost, and now the column has corrupt data. (Why did you kill the original value?) Since the column of gene names usually goes off screen and is often in alphabetical order nobody notices this until something breaks in a bizarre way in another person's hands. Scientific papers have had corrupt data for this reason many times, and everyone advises each other to avoid excel for this reason. It might even make a difference for a clinical diagnosis. This is actually serious. Here's the first google result: http://manuelcorpas.com/2011/11/05/beware-of-gene-names-in-excel/

Alternatively, if a column of text is pasted which has an overwhelming majority of what can only be text values, and an underwhelming minority that could be dates OR text, then prefer text. The probability that I wanted to delete my text and replace it with garbage is 0. Nobody ever wants that to happen, and I'm sure there are many other examples of this biting people in the ass for all sorts of excel users.

Noticed you guys were doing an AMA. Figured this would be the perfect time to bring it up!