Forum Discussion
Helper IDashboard refresh when the column names are different
Hi,
I have developed a dashboard in power BI which will be refreshed monthly
The data changes every month with the change in the column names also. but the column number that I am using in the dashboard is same.
eg: if the column names are Jan, Feb, March, April . I use the latest month April and previous month March I also perfomed some calculations using April and March columns when I was developing
Next month the column names will be Feb, March, April, May and when I refresh, the dashboard should show me May, April data. Currently it shows me an error that it could not match the column names
Can you please advice me if there is any easy technique to do it?
Thanks
Hi bvsaicharitha,
No. The data refresh won't work if the source column names are changed. If you remove some columns from source, an error would prompt that "The column "xxxx" of the table wasn't found". However, it is possible to refersh data in Power BI if you add new columns to source but keep all original columns remain.
In your scenario where the data changes monthly with the change in the column names while keep the column number fixed, it is similar to the former one mentioned above. That case, to update dataset, you have to re-load the data into Power BI desktop each month, rather than directly clicking the refresh button.
Regards,
Yuliana Gu
1 Reply
v-yulgu-msftMicrosoft Employee
Hi bvsaicharitha,
No. The data refresh won't work if the source column names are changed. If you remove some columns from source, an error would prompt that "The column "xxxx" of the table wasn't found". However, it is possible to refersh data in Power BI if you add new columns to source but keep all original columns remain.
In your scenario where the data changes monthly with the change in the column names while keep the column number fixed, it is similar to the former one mentioned above. That case, to update dataset, you have to re-load the data into Power BI desktop each month, rather than directly clicking the refresh button.
Regards,
Yuliana Gu