read excel with more than 90000 records in powerapps

[GerardoPlass]

Hello everyone, I have a database that they gave me where I have more than 90,000 records and I want to read each one of them, is it possible with such amount of data? what would be the ideal way to be able to read that amount of information without using premium connectors, the question is can you insert that amount of information in sharepoint? what is the best way , your guidance please .

[RusselThomas]

Hi @GerardoPlass ,

A few ways, depending on what you're wanting to do with it once you've loaded it.

If you just want to look at the data in PowerApps, you can simply embed the table into PowerApps directly and access it from there - but then the data will be static and will reset every time you reload the app.

If you want to build an app using this data, and you want to have multiple people access and potentially change the data, then you need a source.

If you can't use SQL as a source, then I'd suggest dataverse, dataverse for teams, or if you have to use SPO you can export it to a list as well - SPO lists can handle up to around 30mil rows - depending on how many columns you have (not that I've ever seen an SPO list with 30m rows mind you) - so sharepoint won't blink, but your app might pass out trying to load that many rows all at once 🙂

But if you put it in a list and then connect it to a gallery, you can scroll through the data 100 rows at a time pretty seamlessly inside PowerApps...

If you need to filter it though, you'll need to index your filtering columns in SPO.

Can you share more about what you're planning to do with, or how you need to work with the data?

Kind regards,

RT

[GerardoPlass]

Thank you very much for your answer

I start by showing you my data in an excel , there are approximately 90000 rows

First I must show basic information in the app, for example your name, what race is your age etc (this must match between the User().Email and the email column of the excel.

and it should show like this

Then the student should be shown some options according to what corresponds to him;  For example, if you select 50-50, it should show you the similar race 1 column and if you select 80-20 0 100-0, it should show you the similar race 2

after selecting this radio, the similar race that matches it appears and then this has to be sent to a sharepoint list to evaluate results. (and I need to attach files too)

[Drrickryp]

@GerardoPlass 

Given the operators and functions you want to use on your dataset, LookUp(), Filter(), Sort(), SortByColumns() and "=", SharePoint will work for you.  However, if you need to use "not", "in", "<>" or Search(), as these are not delegatable in SharePoint, then you will need to select either Sql or Dataverse,  I suggest that you watch a short video showing how to do it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvTiAanB3Cs before you decide which connector to use since it will be a tedious process to load 90,000 items from Excel to SharePoint.  

[WarrenBelz]

@GerardoPlass ,

Excel is not a good data source for queries with that size of records. If you have access to SharePoint, I would recommend you switch to that.

I have a blog on SharePoint Delegation that also may assist here.

[RusselThomas]

Hi @GerardoPlass ,

If that image has actual people's names and email addresses in it - I would suggest you blank it out or depersonalise it before posting it on a public forum, just to be safe and respect people's personal information. 

The important info is the column names, if anyone wants to offer you some usable formulas, and for data you can always just show one row of 'dummy' data so people can see the data types. 

Dataverse for teams, dataverse or SQL are always going to be better choices for data sources, but if you only have access to SharePoint then it's not too hard to get it in there - just note that no matter what source you use you will always have data row limits on your queries and as @Drrickryp said, you need to know what's delegable and what isn't between the data sources (Sharepoint, Dataverse, SQL). 

That said, I haven't met an app yet that couldn't be built in SharePoint, you just have to think carefully about your indexing and how you query the data - but there are times when it may become really tedious to work around delegable queries, so if it becomes impossible then you'll have shift to another datasource.

Getting it into SharePoint.

You can Import from Excel when creating a list in SharePoint, or Export directly from Excel into a SharePoint site.  I haven't imported Excel from the SharePoint side for some time, as it always used to be much slower than Exporting to SharePoint from Excel for some reason - maybe it's better these days, but I always still export from Excel.  The only annoying thing with this process is that the default view for the list always ends up "Edit in Grid view" for some reason - but it's hardly a massive issue so I still use it.

• If you want to import from SharePoint, it's pretty straight forward - Home page, New List, From Excel.
• If you want to try export from Excel and you're unfamiliar with the export function in Excel, make sure the data is a table in Excel, select all of it and hit ctrl+T to make sure it's a table - if it isn't it'll prompt you to make it one, if so just check your headers are correct.  Then go to the Table Design tab (it only shows up for Tables) and hit "Export" and select "Export table to SharePoint list" and follow the prompts.

90k rows will still take a few minutes to create either direction, so be patient.  

Once it's done, immediately go the List Settings, then find "Indexed Columns" and open that.  Index simple text columns that are unique first - like the email address, assuming a person won't appear more than once in this column, and then one or two other (preferably unique) columns that you plan to filter on.

Note - the Index will only run at the next cycle which runs around every 15 minutes for SPO.

Then, connect from Power Apps and start playing 🙂

Hope this helps,

RT

[WarrenBelz · Accepted solution]

@GerardoPlass ,
Adding to @RusselThomas 's detailed comments - I totally agree with his observation I haven't met an app yet that couldn't be built in SharePoint - I have never built in anything else and have never found anything I could not achieve with a bit of thought given to data structure and process.

What I can add is two things - I advise against using Import from Excel as it names the underlying fields Field_1, Field_2  . . .  and will cause you some grief in your Power Apps coding.

The good news is that you can bulk-import Excel once you have the SharePoint list set up with Power Automate. In the Flow below, I imported 75,000 records in batches of 10,000 - it took about 30 minutes for each batch. I put the Excel file in my OneDrive with eight tabs (eight tables) and simply changed the table number each run.

It is important also that you set your Pagination on the Get Rows to the number you are importing per run.

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