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Receive emails in PDF format. Trying to update Excel or Sharepoint then update Power BI

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Posted on by CU11061308-1

I receive emails every week in PDF format with statistics.

I'm trying to take the information out of the PDF, add it to a SharePoint list or Excel to display the statistics.

After, I'm trying to take the information from the SharePoint or Excel and update a Power BI report.

I don't have premium and have been trying to figure this out. Could somebody help me out? Thank you!

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RaghavMishra 261 on at

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Hi there,

Good news and one important caveat: most of this pipeline works with standard tooling, but the automatic PDF extraction step is where the premium licensing comes in. Here’s how the pieces fit together.

The overall flow

Trigger on the email - use the When a new email arrives (V3) trigger (Office 365 Outlook). You can filter on sender/subject/folder and require that it has attachments, so it only fires on your weekly statistics email.

Extract the PDF data - this is the catch. The Microsoft-native way to pull structured data out of a PDF is AI Builder document/invoice processing. AI Builder is licensed on a capacity basis (AI Builder credits / Copilot Credits), so it’s a premium add-on and won’t be available on a standard plan.

Write to your data store - once you have the values, use Create item (SharePoint) or Add a row into a table (Excel Online Business) to land each week’s stats. Both are standard connectors.

Refresh Power BI - point your Power BI dataset at the SharePoint list / Excel file and configure scheduled refresh so the report updates automatically after each new row lands.

About the “no premium” constraint

The email trigger, SharePoint/Excel writes, and Power BI scheduled refresh are all achievable without AI Builder.

The PDF-to-data extraction step is the one that genuinely needs the premium capability. Microsoft Learn documents AI Builder as the supported route for this, and it consumes credits - so if you can’t license it, that specific step isn’t something I can point you to a free Microsoft-documented equivalent for. If your PDFs happen to have a consistent, simple layout, some people handle extraction manually or upstream before the data reaches the flow, but that’s outside what the docs prescribe.

Also worth checking: some Power BI scheduled-refresh scenarios depend on your Power BI licensing, so confirm your workspace settings.

References (Microsoft Learn)

Trigger a cloud flow based on email properties (When a new email arrives V3)

AI Builder licensing overview

Invoice/document processing prebuilt model

Data refresh in Power BI

Found this helpful? Please mark ✅ "Does this answer your question?" so others searching for the same issue can find it quickly. A 👍 on "Was this reply helpful?" or a ♥ Like is also much appreciated!

Raghav Mishra - LinkedIn | PowerAI Labs

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Vish WR 3,748 on at

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Raghav's overall architecture is correct — email trigger, store the data in SharePoint or Excel, and then refresh Power BI on a schedule is a proven approach.
One small point on licensing: the AI Builder prebuilt document processing models include a limited free monthly allowance per environment. It's not unlimited, but for a scenario like processing a single PDF each week, that allowance is often enough and may not require any additional AI Builder credits.
I'd suggest testing the prebuilt invoice, receipt, or general document model against your PDF first. If it extracts the required fields accurately, you can likely implement the entire solution with minimal additional licensing costs.

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Vish WR 3,748 on at

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@CU11061308-1

Wanted to check if you were able to resolve your issue?

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