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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
6 years ago
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How to automatically refresh when file name is slightly different each time (timestamp at the end)

HelloI have a requirement to load csv files from an internal tool into PowerBI. The challenge is that the generated filenames have a date/timestamp as the suffix. For eg, todays Employee file will be...
Need Help
  • fhill's avatar
    fhill
    6 years ago

     

    Import a FOLDER and 'Combine & Edit' to get to Power Query.  On the 'Source' Step you should have a list of files in the Folder.  While 'Source' is selected in Applied Steps, Add a Filter to the 'Name' column:

     

    We are going to 'Filter' the File Names while on the 'Source' Step, to add a NEW Step removing the files we don't want...

     

     

    Now a new 'Filtered Rows' step has appeared, and all following steps will not see the bad files.

     

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    6 years ago

    Thank you for the suggestion. But the referred article implies that the import file is in its own unique folder. 

     

    In my case, I have about 13 different files to import in my "Downloads" folder, so it would be manual work each day to move them into individual folders. 

    Any way to change the data source to point to "starts with" filename instead of the complete filename?

     

    Thanks,

    Jas

    • jthomson's avatar
      jthomson
      Icon for Solution Sage rankSolution Sage
      6 years ago

      If you import the folder as a whole, you should have a step where it'll list each file name, which you can then filter down like you want in Power Query

      • Anonymous's avatar
        Anonymous
        Not applicable
        6 years ago

        When I import the folder as a whole, PowerBI wants to combine all the files in the folder into one table. I have spent hours to try and see if I can change it, but it always seems to want to combine the files, even though the files have very different format..