In this blog post, I’m going to walk you through modifying a Power BI Desktop file with an imported data model to use an external data model hosted in Azure Analysis Services or SQL Server Analysis Services 2017. This isn’t supported by any stretch of the imagination but if you’re in a pinch and have to convert a Power BI Desktop file from an imported data model to Live Query then this may be helpful to you. Also, this method works as of the January 2018 release of Power BI Desktop but there’s no guarantee that this method will work in future releases of Power BI Desktop.
I was inspired to write this blog post after reading this post in the Power BI community forums by odegarun. It’s a great post with some good instructions, but I wanted to provide a clearer walk through as well as validate a couple other things with the process for my customers and anyone else that might be interested.
Check it out with the understanding that this is not a supported operation.