Onedrive Excel connection issues

[Anonymous]

Is it me or are others constantly battling with connectivity issues to the primary data source!?

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't!

Sometimes logging out of the app and re-signing in works, sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes opening the excel spreadsheet and re saving it seems to work, having not changed anything data wise and following the rules of no formulas etc...

I'm using my personal one drive as cloud host for my excel spreadsheet data source.

The account I sign into PA is my business work address and so "usually" I'm asked to Allow access to my personal OneDrive from my business account.  Sometimes I have data, sometimes I don't!

Granted it’s a beta app and I'm opening, viewing and editing from different devices, but isn't that the point!

I understand that security is paramount and everything should be done to secure and encrypt all connections.

But Microsoft why is it so unreliable \ flakey \ infuriating, when all I want to do is crack on!

Apologies for the rant, but if this is to be considered a reliable business solution surely this need to be more stable!

Anyone else suffering my issues and any solutions?

Ta muchly

[Roberts2727]

Same issues happened to me today build my first app. Ultimately the notebook became "locked" by me and I ended up having to delete it and recreate a second notebook and reconnect everything. Then the same thing happened with that one after working on it for an hour so I ultimately gave up. Im going to try to use sharepoint lists next weekend when I get some time but I feel like I wasted a day today on power apps. 

[hpkeong · Accepted solution]

Hi

Just sharing from the first day we were granted access to PowerApps on the 7/Jan 2016.

From experiecen, DropBox is found to be most stable connecting cloud storage (though it did has problem but 1/6 months..pretty stable) and fast in saving cloud data (about3-5 seconds, compare to Google Drive and OneDrive which may take 40-50 seconds).

I have no idea why but I keep using DropBox (either Personal acc or Work acc) and all works fine.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Just wanted to feed back following your recommendation.

I can confirm that dropbox is a far more stable in terms of connectivity.

I'm having no where near as many problems.

Thank you. Very much appreciated!

[Ceebu]

I'm having similar problems with Excel files in OneDrive - I have tried paring down my app and breaking it into two to overcome any potential bottlenecks, it still ends up not loading data sometime..

[mr-dang]

Agreed. Dropbox is the easiest solution.

• 3s write speed is alright
• just as easily edited as OneDrive
• notifications are preprogrammed

Before you get too deep in Dropbox, I recommend the Common Data Model. The write speed is instant and you can validate data to be value/text/boolean rather than just text. It's free and can be accessed by the Entties button on the PowerApps website. It's in beta and has its shortcomings, but I foresee that in the longterm, it will be advantageous to most setups.

[Anonymous]

Great news thanks for the tip!

[Ceebu]

Just wanted to follow up on the CDM tip - I created an entity through the portal fairly easily - however having difficulty updating the data in the entity. The add-in for excel does not want to let me sign in (my work account has SSO, so it redirects to my SSO enabled signing page). However, PowerBI does not connect to the CDM yet, so any data collected cannot be used as a part of dashboard / visualization (which is what I was trying to do)

I did get an update from MSFT support that they are working on the connectivity issues between onedrive and power apps - hope they fix it soon !!