You attempt to publish a Microsoft Excel file to Power BI, and you receive the error message shown in the exhibit. (Click the Exhibit button.)
The file is in c:\data\.
You need to ensure that you can publish the file to Power BI.
What should you do first?
The error message indicates that the workbook needs to be in a supported Excel file format (.xlsx or .xlsm) and must not be password protected. Decrypting the workbook ensures it is not password protected, making it publishable to Power BI. Other options do not address the specific issue mentioned in the error message.
The file definitely needs to be decrypted and the answer makes sense, buuuuut...... Shouldn't the excel file also fist need to get uploaded to OneDrive rather than C:/Data/ ? Would saving it to Sharepoint to the job?
That's right, but they ask what to do first... probably the first thing to fix it
Starting in the February 2017 update, Excel 2016 supports publishing of local Excel files. They do not need to be saved to OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-publish-from-excel
You can directly publish the excel file from your local as well. But the advantage of keeping the workbook in Sharepoint One Drive Business will be that file will be in sync with the Power BI service since both are in the cloud. So It will refresh the content every one hour.