Forum Discussion

danextian's avatar
danextian
Super User
9 years ago
Solved

Exclude from refresh certain files for a folder data source

Hi All,   I thought that it would be simpler to just connect to a folder instead of connecting to multiple files one by one and then appending them to a new query. It worked fine but I realized tha...
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  • danextian's avatar
    danextian
    9 years ago

    Well, I ended  up separating my data sources into current and old folders. Thanks for this.

v-yulgu-msft's avatar
v-yulgu-msft
Microsoft Employee
9 years ago

Hi danextian,

 

In Power BI desktop, we can enable/disable a query to be refreshed when clicking on the Refresh button in the top ribbon in query edit mode.

 

Right click one query and select the last option 'Properties'. 

 

In your scenario, when you load multiple files into a single query, it is not possible to exclude some certain files when refreshing data source. The only workaround is to load files into Power BI as different queries, then, append them into a new query according to your need.

 

Best regards,
Yuliana Gu

  • danextian's avatar
    danextian
    Super User
    9 years ago

    Well, I ended  up separating my data sources into current and old folders. Thanks for this.

    • a68tbird's avatar
      a68tbird
      Resolver II
      8 years ago

      Hi danextian,

        I am currently having this same issue, and came across your solution.  I guess the two folder system seems to be the only solution. It's cumbersome that the files have to be moved around manually everytime. I'd have to save the Excel email attachments to a "current" folder, run the PowerBI query, and then move those Excel files to an "archive" folder.  Have you figured out any elegant solutions to this since you posted this back in May?

       

      Thanks

      • danextian's avatar
        danextian
        Super User
        8 years ago

        hi a68tbird

         

        I thought that was the solution but realized that once I have created a new query by appending the old query to the new one, Power BI will still include the  old one in the refresh even I've set the  original 'old' query not to be loaded.  I guess a more elegant solution is to load both query separately to the designer (where 'old' is set not included in refresh) and combine them using UNION function in DAX.  Just a warning: UNION combines columns by position in their respective table unlike the append function in M which is by column name.