Importing Survey Monkey data

Hi Dwittkop,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community, and special thanks to amitchandak  for prompt and helpful responses.

Don’t import the full SurveyMonkey dataset at once filter only the surveys and dates you need, remove unused columns, use incremental refresh, and if the connector still fails, pull data via the API into SharePoint/Azure first and load from there into Power BI.

Thanks & Regards,

Prasanna Kumar

Hi Dwittkop 

Solutions / Workarounds

1.  Use DirectQuery instead of Import

• If supported by your connector or API, use DirectQuery mode so Power BI queries SurveyMonkey live rather than importing all data.

• This avoids hitting the import size limit, but may have performance considerations for very large surveys.

2. Pre-process / Aggregate the Data

• Use Power Query or an intermediate storage (Azure Data Lake, SQL, or Dataverse) to flatten or aggregate survey responses before loading into Power BI.

• For branching surveys, consider summarizing at the question level rather than importing every row/response.

3. Incremental Data Loading

• Load data in chunks (e.g., by survey period, survey ID, or response batches) and append into Power BI over time.

• Use parameters in Power Query to filter the dataset dynamically.

4. Consider External ETL

• Use tools like Azure Data Factory, Power Automate, or Python scripts to extract, clean, and flatten SurveyMonkey data into a storage location.

• Power BI can then connect to this storage instead of directly to SurveyMonkey, reducing size and complexity.