From the course: Microsoft Power Apps Essential Training: The Basics

Prepare and upload the Excel data source - Power Apps Tutorial

From the course: Microsoft Power Apps Essential Training: The Basics

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Prepare and upload the Excel data source

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- [Instructor] We're going to create our next app from scratch. And I choose to create this particular kind of an app because of how ubiquitous Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are in most organizations. Almost everywhere I go, there are spreadsheets that are being used really for transactional information. It could be donations, it could be members, it could be staff and their locations. It could be request for catalogs. It doesn't matter what it is, everywhere I go, there are Excel spreadsheet data sources that are used by more than one person. In this particular instance, the users are people who are working in our office, but also people who are working in the field. And it would be really nice if the people working in the field could interact with this data using a mobile device, instead of waiting until they get back to their vehicle, or even back to the office to enter data, or heaven forbid, but I've seen this happen, pick up the phone and call someone at the office to type in the information, because it's not easy for them to get to. So again, I look for this type of a data set that needs a better front end, and provide it with Power Apps as a way to create some quick wins in an organization. Because Power Apps only accepts tables, this has already been formatted as a table. I formatted the first 500 rows. Your limit here is 100,000. Power Apps can use data sources with more than a hundred thousand rows, but not from an Excel spreadsheet data source. So, make sure you give yourself enough room. If you're not sure, you can always choose 100,000 rows, and you'll still be fine. Now, the other thing is, this table actually has a name. If I go to table two, that's what this table looks like. But I want to give it a more useful name. So, on the formulas tab, I'm going to the Name Manager, and I'm going to choose table two, edit it, and give it a new name. And that new name is service. (keyboard keys clicking) Call log. Service call log. And that's the name (monitor blips) of my table. Notice, that I can't have a space or a character in this name, though. (cursor clicking) So, service, no space call, no space log. I could also use underscores. And because I have this name box up here, and it gives me a place for a comment, I'm actually going (keyboard keys clicking) to say, "Used as a Power Apps data source." Just in case, because that name manager box actually will display this comment. So if somebody opens this dialogue, they can see, oh, there's a comment, I might want to pay attention to that. (cursor clicks) Having made some changes, I will want to save this again, and then close it. (cursor clicks) Back here in Power Apps, I'm going to click Create, and choose Excel. Start from an Excel file to create a three screen app. And here comes Power Apps. The next thing I'm asked is, what connection do I want to use? I'm going to refresh my connections (cursor clicks) to make sure that Power Apps is looking again at One Drive for business. Scroll down to my Power Apps folder, open My Service Calls app, open my file. And there is my table. Service call log. And I'm going to click Connect. And Power Apps is building my application using the data source that we selected. Here we are. Welcome to Power Apps studio. And if I zoom in a bit, you'll see that this data is actually coming from the data source that we just created and connected to.

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