Using a local Excel file in Power Apps without uploading it to OneDrive or SharePoint isn’t really possible. Power Apps doesn’t support direct access to local files, so you’d need a workaround. But even if it did, Excel is already a poor choice as a data source.
Excel has several limitations even when stored in the cloud. It’s not a real database—there’s no indexing, weak data validation, and it doesn’t handle multiple users well. Performance can slow down significantly once you go beyond a few thousand rows, and Power Apps doesn’t automatically sync changes made in Excel.
If you try to keep it on-premises, it gets even worse. Power Apps can’t access local files directly, so you’d need an extra setup just to make it work. Any changes you make in Excel won’t be reflected in Power Apps unless you sync them manually. Plus, Excel on-prem isn’t built for real-time collaboration and poses security risks.
If you want a better solution, you should consider moving the data to a SQL Server (even SQL Express) and connecting Power Apps to it through the On-Premises Data Gateway. If your company has an on-prem SharePoint server, you can store the Excel file there and connect Power Apps via the gateway. You can also use Power Automate to sync the Excel data to a cloud source like Dataverse, SharePoint, or SQL, which will make it easier for Power Apps to work with. If you have development resources, setting up a REST API to expose the data and connecting Power Apps via a custom connector is another option.
If you absolutely must use Excel, moving it to the cloud is your best bet. Excel in OneDrive or SharePoint still has limitations, but it’s better than trying to force Power Apps to work with a local file. For a stable, scalable, and efficient solution, Excel isn’t the answer—a real database is.
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