Import and Visualize Reckon 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 Reckon 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 Reckon data. This article shows how to use the Data Connection Wizard, accessible from the Data ribbon, to import Reckon data into a Power View report.

Connect to Reckon 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.

When you are connecting to a local Reckon instance, you do not need to set any connection properties.

Requests to Reckon are made through the Remote Connector. The Remote Connector runs on the same machine as Reckon and accepts connections through a lightweight, embedded Web server. The server supports SSL/TLS, enabling users to connect securely from remote machines.

The first time you connect to your company file, authorize the Remote Connector with Reckon. See the "Getting Started" chapter of the help documentation for a guide.

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 Reckon 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.