Legacy Installers for Power Query and Power BI Desktop
Let's be honest, one of the incredibly cool things about Power Query and Power BI Desktop is that they are updated monthly. We always get new features and bug fixes, but there is a potential downside as well. It's not unheard of to get a new bug in the product as well, and on rare occasions, it can be a real show stopper.
Unfortunately, Microsoft does not "bin" the old versions of Power Query for Excel or Power BI Desktop. (There is no public facing web page with the old Power Query or Power BI Desktop installers that we can access.) Essentially, they leave it up to you to hold on to your old installers. Now you may be okay to check in your downloads folder, but what if you encounter a new bug that is serious, and you just wiped out all your old version history? Well hey... we've got you covered!
We have captured legacy versions of the installers for both Power Query for Excel 2010 and Excel 2013, (both 32 bit and 64 bit,) as well as Power BI Desktop. So if you need to roll back to an older version, you can always get it here.
Download Legacy Installers for Power Query or Power BI Desktop
All of the old installers are hosted in my OneDrive account, which you can find at the links below:
| Power Query 32 and 64 bit Installers | Power BI Installers |
Please be aware that these are not necessarily the final release version, but rather the last version that captured before we updated. They were officially published by Microsoft, but you still install at your own risk and all that.
What about Power Query for Excel 2016?
Well. this one is a bit more problematic...
Excel 2016 comes in a couple of different formats. There are subscription versions, and there are non-subscription versions. You can figure out which you have by going to File --> Account, where you'll see something like this:
If you are not on a subscription license, there is simply no going back... or forward for that matter. You're stuck with what you have and any updates that Microsoft provides.
If you are on subscription, then you need to pay attention to the channel. Channels are broken down into Insider, Current, First Release for Deferred and Deferred channels, and the updates cascade through those channels on a regular basis. If something breaks, the only option is to either move to a prior channel (downgrade from insider to current, or current to deferred) or wait for the next update.
You can learn more about channels on Microsoft's site.
