CSV and Excel files in your Azure data warehouse and Power BI
Load CSV & Excel files
Yres has no separate source type for local files. CSV and Excel files come in along two routes. The simplest: add an Azure Blob Storage source and upload the files there with the upload button, which requires nothing inside your own network. If the files have to stay on a machine or network share, you use a File Server source with a self-hosted integration runtime and an account with read access. Either way, each file becomes a table in your Azure SQL database.
At a glance
- Route A (recommended)
- Upload to an Azure Blob Storage source with the upload button when adding files. No self-hosted integration runtime needed
- Route B
- File Server source with a UNC path (\\server\share) or a local path. A self-hosted integration runtime is mandatory
- Sign-in for route B
- Windows user name (usually DOMAIN\user) and password of an account with read access to the path
- Columns and parsing options
- There is no catalogue to read: you define the files and the CSV or Excel parsing options when adding them
- Recent files only
- Per table you set a look-back window on the file's modified date; without a window every file qualifies
- Files in SharePoint
- If the files live in a document library, use the SharePoint source
- Password and token
- The share's password or the container's SAS token goes to the Key Vault of your own environment; the web application does not keep it
What you arrange yourself
- 1Choose the route. If you deliver files yourself or occasionally, take route A. If another process drops them on a share, take route B.
- 2Route A: create a storage account with a container and a SAS token, add an Azure Blob Storage source in Yres and upload the files.
- 3Route B: install a self-hosted integration runtime on a machine in the network where the files are, and make sure it can be selected in Yres.
- 4Route B: arrange an account with read access to the path, valid from the machine running the integration runtime, and check that the firewall allows traffic to the share.
- 5Add the files as tables and set the parsing options for CSV or Excel.
When you need this — and when you don't
A standalone connector is enough if…
If one person maintains one spreadsheet for one report, reading Excel straight into Power BI is enough.
Yres adds value if…
Yres earns its place when spreadsheets are part of the figures the business is run on: budgets, price lists or classifications that must sit next to your ERP data, are read in at fixed times, and where you want to be able to see what they contained last month.
Frequently asked questions: CSV / Excel
Do I have to install anything in my own network to load an Excel file?
Not if you upload the file. With route A the file then sits in a blob container and is read from the cloud. Only when the file has to stay on your own machine or a network share do you need a self-hosted integration runtime. That is an agent on a machine in that network through which Yres reaches the files.
The integration runtime rejects a local path with "Access ... is denied". What now?
That happens when the path points to the machine the integration runtime itself runs on. By default the runtime blocks access to its own machine. You enable it once on that machine, using the integration runtime's command-line tool with the EnableLocalMachineAccess option. The wiki gives the exact command.
Which route do I pick for a file another system writes every night?
Route B, the File Server source. It is meant for files that stay on the machine or share because another process puts them there. With the look-back window on the file's modified date, the load only picks up files that changed recently.
Does Yres keep the history of a spreadsheet that keeps being overwritten?
That depends on the load type you choose for the file. For files these are FULL, IMAGE and OVERWRITE. Only OVERWRITE discards history: the table is emptied and refilled. With the other two, earlier versions of a row are kept; with IMAGE, rows that have disappeared from the file are closed off as well.
Full technical description in the knowledge base →·Last reviewed:
Data warehouse automation that runs in your own Azure
Built for organisations on Azure and Power BI. Yres connects your sources, keeps the history and promotes changes in a controlled way, without manual work.