Import and Visualize Outlook Data in Power View

NOTE: For Excel for the web (Excel 365) and Excel 2019 or higher, Power View is no longer supported. Microsoft encourages the use of Power BI for those users. Please read our article on working with Outlook in Power BI using our Power BI connector for more information.

You can use the built-in ODBC support in Excel to rapidly create Power View reports featuring Outlook data. This article shows how to use the Data Connection Wizard, accessible from the Data ribbon, to import Outlook data into a Power View report.

Connect to Outlook as an ODBC Data Source

If you have not already, first specify connection properties in an ODBC DSN (data source name). This is the last step of the driver installation. You can use the Microsoft ODBC Data Source Administrator to create and configure ODBC DSNs.

Using OAuth Authentication

Microsoft Graph API uses OAuth 2.0 for authentication. You must register an application in the Microsoft Azure Portal to obtain OAuth credentials (Client ID and Client Secret).

Obtaining OAuth Credentials

1. Log in to the Azure Portal.
2. Navigate to Azure Active Directory > App registrations.
3. Click New registration to create a new application.
4. Enter an application name and select the appropriate account types.
5. Set the Redirect URI to your application's callback URL (e.g., http://localhost:33333 for desktop apps).
6. Click Register to create the application.
7. On the application overview page, copy the Application (client) ID - this is your OAuthClientId.
8. Navigate to Certificates & secrets and create a new client secret.
9. Copy the client secret value - this is your OAuthClientSecret.
10. Navigate to API permissions and add the required Microsoft Graph API permissions:
    • Mail.Read - For accessing email messages
    • Contacts.Read - For accessing contacts
    • Calendars.Read - For accessing calendar events
    • Tasks.Read - For accessing To Do tasks
    • offline_access - For obtaining refresh tokens
11. Click Grant admin consent to grant these permissions.

Connecting with OAuth

After setting the following connection properties, you are ready to connect:

• AuthScheme: Set this to OAuth.
• InitiateOAuth: Set this to GETANDREFRESH. The CData API Profile for Outlook will automatically walk through the OAuth process in order to obtain the access token.
• OAuthClientId: Set this to the Application (client) ID from Azure Portal.
• OAuthClientSecret: Set this to the client secret value from Azure Portal.
• TenantId: Set this to your Azure AD tenant identifier (GUID or domain name like 'contoso.onmicrosoft.com').
• CallbackURL: Set this to the Redirect URI you specified in your app registration (e.g., http://localhost:33333 for desktop apps).

Example connection string

Profile=C:\profiles\Outlook.apip;AuthScheme=OAuth;InitiateOAuth=GETANDREFRESH;OAuthClientId=your_client_id;OAuthClientSecret=your_client_secret;TenantId=your_tenant_id;CallbackUrl=http://localhost:33333;

When you configure the DSN, you may also want to set the Max Rows connection property. This will limit the number of rows returned, which is especially helpful for improving performance when designing reports and visualizations.

Connect with the Data Connection Wizard

Follow the steps below to connect to the DSN from the Data Connection Wizard in Excel.

1. In recent versions of Excel the Data Connection Wizard is not visible by default. To enable the Data Connection Wizard in Excel, go to File -> Options -> Data and under Show legacy data import wizards check the From Data Connection Wizard (Legacy).
2. After enabling the Data Connection Wizard, on the Data tab you can click Get Data -> Legacy Wizards -> From Data Connection Wizard (Legacy).
3. In the Data Connection Wizard, select the ODBC DSN option.
4. Select the ODBC DSN for Outlook from the list.

5. Select the tables you want to work with.

   If you want to import multiple tables, deselect the "Connect to a specific table" option. After you connect to the data source, you can select multiple tables: After you click Finish to close the Data Connection Wizard, select the "Enable selection of multiple tables" option in the Select Table dialog.

6. In the Import Data dialog, select the destination for your data. For example, select the Table option and the Existing worksheet option. Then click the cell in your worksheet where results should be output.
7. Click Insert -> Power View to create a new Power View report.

Create a Table

Tables are the starting point for charts and other representations of your data. To create a table, select a column in the field list. You can also drag and drop table names and column names onto the view.

Create Data Visualizations

On the Design tab, you can change tables into charts and other visualizations.