An item with the same key has already been added Error

[Anonymous]

Since updating our version of Power BI Desktop to 2.87.1061.0 64-bit (November 2020), we are getting an error every time we try to import data from our SQL Server. The error reads: "An item with the same key has already been added." It does not matter if I include the database name when connecting or just the server, is still gets the error each time. I am not even able to see the tables and views in our SQL Server.

We have not had this issue with an past versions of Power BI Desktop, so I cannot tell what is causing it. Has anyone seen this issue and know how to fix it?

[v-janeyg-msft]

Hi, @Anonymous 

It’s my pleasure to answer for you.

Please check whether there are some columns in the tables that have the same field name. If so, please rename these columns to enable each column has its unique field name. 

You can also refer the following similar case that could help you:

Solved: Unexpected error: An item with the same key has al... - Microsoft Power BI Community

Of course, you can update to the latest desktop version to see if the problem still exists.

If it doesn’t solve your problem, please feel free to ask me.

Best Regards

Janey Guo

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[tilesanmi123]

This is my first time commenting here and i had to, so as to help others and because this community has been wonderful .Updating the Power BI Desktop software worked for me. Although  I was using several Excel files as my Datasource but the moment i updated the powerbi desktop application the error vanished.

Thank you so much

[Anonymous]

Hi @v-janeyg-msft,

We did try updating to the December version of Power BI Desktop, but that did not correct the issue. We also noticed we can connect to SQL Server through the ODBC connection, but we cannot connect to SQL Server directly in Power BI. We have tried pretty much everything we can think of in Power BI itself, but we still have had no luck.

Regarding our SQL Server, we checked to see if we have any tables or views that are named the same with different capitalization, but we could not find any. If you have any other ideas of what may be causing this issue, please let me know.

[MFelix]

Hi @Anonymous ,

I never had a similar issue, I suggest you place this on the issues part of the forum, they are usually very fast in responding.

Some of the issues sometimes comes from different setups on the machines.

[MFelix]

Hi @Anonymous ,

I would suggest for you to make the update for the December version, and check if it works properly, if not you should report this on the issues part of the forum, ussually they are pretty responsive and help with this kind of issues.