Cyclic Reference Error in Power Query - PBI Desktop and Excel Office 365

[edhans]

Has anyone been experiencing a cyclic reference error when refreshing tables either in Queries in Power BI Desktop or Excel in Office 365 - specifically the Insider build?

This started for me a few months ago with Excel on Insider builds. Probably 1809 or 1810. It continues through 1901. Today I just got the same thing with the November 64 bit Store version of Power BI Desktop.

The fix is always the same. Just hit "REFRESH ALL" again and it works.

There is something broken in the mashup engine that causes this. I've seent the yellow frown faces until I am blue in the face but have heard nothing. Just wondering if anyone else has seen this.

So far I've just seen this error against our SQL 2008 on-prem SQL Server. The data sources aren't huge, under 10MB. I've seen this on queries that have no merges or combines. Just straight tables and the related filtering and other transformations.

[CatPhish]

OK, so it isn't just me!

I just posted a message reporting the same problem.  Error on initial refresh, all subsequent refreshes run without error.

[edhans]

Thanks for the confirm @CatPhish. It does seem to happen most often on the initial refresh after opening a file, but it can be an old file, or a file used yesterday, but yeah, does seem to the the first time it is refreshed on opening. Good data point.