Using Konsolidator Konnect on Mac
The source of most issues with Excel on Mac is that Excel on Mac has never had support for the same data handling capabilities that Excel for PC/Windows has. Capabilities that are often needed by - if not essential to - finance professionals. Things like Power Pivot (support for data model), Power Query, VBA etc.
What functionality is available on Mac?
On an up-to-date Mac and Office for Mac, it has been possible for quite some time to update existing queries in an Excel spreadsheet including ones based on an OData source like our Konnect API is.
Now, according to Microsoft, it should also be possible to create and edit the queries with most of the functionality known from the PC version of Excel with reference to this article from Microsoft:
https://insider.office.com/en-us/blog/shape-data-with-power-query-editor-in-excel-for-mac
Microsoft has had this Power Query editing support part in beta for a very long time and, with reference to the above Microsoft article, are now finally including it in their insider preview. The insider preview is in Microsoft terms, under normal circumstances, to be considered the final step before production (a final beta stage). The cautious recommendation would in this scenario probably be to update as the added functionality expectedly would outweigh potential bugs still present.
What does Konsolidator provide and support?
As a Software-as-a-Service company we cannot support the installation or update of operating systems nor the installation or update of local basic work tools like the Office pack. We provide a data source based on one of the most widely used and supported data source frameworks (OData), but our customers will need to make sure that they have the necessary software available to support their reporting needs.
For security reasons it is always recommended to make sure that both operating system and locally installed work applications are up-to-date and with that in mind we always aim to make sure that our application, including the output, is useable on the latest updated systems and applications where- and whenever possible. In this specific scenario - Excel on Mac - limitations due to lack of development on Mac by Microsoft, has made this impossible to make all features available up until now, but even now with the latest insider preview the compatibility still has to be secured by the client and it may not be as plug and play and one could wish for.
It is important to note that the limitations with Mac and Konnect are not specifically related to Konsolidator and Konnect. Any type of data source from any source would meet the same limitations on Office for Mac.
Recommended solution
It is always our recommendation to use a Windows based PC - simply because that is the only way you get the full Excel potential and experience which is beneficial to any finance professional.
If the Windows solution is not a possibility, then as briefly mentioned above, the best workaround for the limitations mentioned in generating Excel reporting on a Mac is to start out with a pre generated Excel file containing the data tables to build on top of. A prebuilt spreadsheet already containing the Konnect framework should be refreshable, as on Windows, if the Mac and Excel are both up-to-date.
A great place to start would be this pre generated Excel file that also provides easy options to limit the data to what is needed - for best possible performance - without doing any power query editing. The file also contains some getting started formulas:
KonnectFramework v0.5.xlsx - INDSÆT LINK
An alternative on Mac would be upgrading to the Office Insider Preview as described above with reference to the link where Microsoft goes into more detail.