Forum Discussion

Nipius's avatar
Nipius
Advocate I
7 years ago

Session ID cannot be found.

Hi there!

 

I have created a dataset in Power BI, which I've linked to Excel via the Microsoft Power BI Publisher for Excel. It works fine until I stop using the pivot tables for several minutes. If I then want to use a pivot table again, it gives me the following message: "The "AAD44836- et cetera" session ID cannot be found. Either the session does not exist or it has already expired". The "et cetera" is course not the actual value. :)

 

It looks like at some point the connection between Power BI and Excel seem to go idle or in hibernation mode.

 

When I try changing the pivot tables two or three times, it seems to restore the connection again.

 

Is this something I can prevent from happening?

14 Replies

  • v-juanli-msft's avatar
    v-juanli-msft
    Community Support

    Hi Nipius 

    Which do you mean "I stop using the pivot tables for several minutes" ?

    Which is the data source of the power bi report you connect to from excel?

    You could check this article :

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/publisher-for-excel#connect-to-data-in-power-bi

     

    Best Regards
    Maggie

     

    Community Support Team _ Maggie Li
    If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

    • Nipius's avatar
      Nipius
      Advocate I

      Hi v-juanli-msft 

      The Power BI report uses data from an SQL server and several Excel reports on my computer. I use DirectImport to create a datamodel which I then connect to Excel. I've created several pivot tables that I update everytime I'd like to show data for a different employee ID. 

      When I open the file, Excel updates the pivot tables without any issues. But when I then look at the output for some minutes and decide to change the filter to a different employee ID, I get the notification I referred to in my initial post. Only after trying to change the filter two or three times, it seems the connection with Power BI has been restored and then it works again without any issues. Until I stop changing the pivot tables for some minutes again.

      • Anonymous's avatar
        Anonymous
        Not applicable

        I have the same problem...repeatedly.  

  • prokhorovd's avatar
    prokhorovd
    Frequent Visitor

    I have the same problem too

     

    The 'XXXXX-XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX' session ID cannot be found. Either the session does not exist or it has already expired

     

    An error can occur when updating any dataset and by accident. I did not find any dependencies. About 2-3 errors occur on 800 dataset`s updates per day

  • We also have customers with this issue - was this ever resolved for you?

     

  • nicg's avatar
    nicg
    Advocate II

    Our users get this session ID error quite often when connecting to our shared Power BI dataset through Excel. I suspect it has something to do with the model being evicted or something, but it's hard to say since there's no good tooling to let us know what's happening in our tenant, especially with V2 workspaces.

     

    It's unfortunate, because many users would like to move back to on-premise SSAS where we didn't have all these connection and memory issues. ☹️

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable

    Hi, Have you ever solved it?

  • I have this same problem with my team. Anyone know of a fix?

  • We are having this issue with a BI Service report that we have exported to Analyze in Excel.  It is a report the users live in and so is open all day. But after several minutes of non use the Session ID cannot be found" error occurs.  Looking at the dates in this thread this is a very long running issue.  Would love to hear of any fixes.  I am thinking to recreate the report as a live connection, but that will be a lot of work in Excel.

    • ldnewlin's avatar
      ldnewlin
      Frequent Visitor

      Might I suggest as a workaround by changing the Connection Properties of the Data Source to Refresh every: x minutes. 

      By default, this is left unchecked.

      Please let me know if this is a workable solution for you!