Include in report refresh

[Domenico96]

Hello

I have a question.
If I upload two tables in Power BI Desktop (e.g., Sales 2024 and Sales 2025) and then create an appended table combining them, what happens if I disable the “Include in report refresh” option for Sales 2024 because its data is now consolidated? When I publish the report to Power BI Service, will the dataset perform a full refresh, or will the Sales 2024 table be excluded from the first refresh?

Thank you 

[v-priyankata]

Hi @Domenico96 

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community.

@danextian @burakkaragoz @Zanqueta @cengizhanarslan Thanks for the inputs.

The information provided by users was helpful. please try those, If you still have questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to the community.

[v-priyankata]

Hi @Domenico96 

Hope everything’s going smoothly on your end. I wanted to check if the issue got sorted. if you have any other issues please reach community.

[cengizhanarslan]

Disabling “Include in report refresh” for Sales 2024 means that table will not be refreshed in Power BI Service, but its data will still be used by the appended table.

When you publish the report, Power BI does not perform a full refresh. Only tables with refresh enabled (for example, Sales 2025) will refresh. The appended table will recompute using cached Sales 2024 data and fresh Sales 2025 data.

[Zanqueta]

Hi @Domenico96 

This behaviour often causes confusion when working with appended tables in Power BI.

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✅ What happens when “Include in report refresh” is disabled?

• When you disable “Include in report refresh” for Sales 2024, Power BI will not query or refresh that table during dataset refresh (either in Desktop or Service).
• The appended table you created (e.g., CombinedSales = Table.Combine({Sales2024, Sales2025})) depends on both tables. If one of them is excluded from refresh, Power BI will use the last cached data for that table.
• Therefore:
  • Sales 2024 remains static (it will not update unless you manually refresh it in Desktop).
  • Sales 2025 will refresh normally, and the appended table will combine the new Sales 2025 data with the old Sales 2024 data.

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✅ When published to Power BI Service

• The dataset refresh in the Service will respect the same setting. Sales 2024 will not be queried again.
• The appended table will not trigger a full refresh of Sales 2024; it will only refresh the tables marked for inclusion.

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✅ Best Practice

If Sales 2024 is truly historical and will never change:

• Disabling refresh is fine and improves performance.
• Alternatively, you could remove Sales 2024 from the model and load it as a static file (e.g., Excel or CSV) if you want to reduce complexity.

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Official Documentation:

Data refresh in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

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[burakkaragoz]

Hi @Domenico96 ,

@danextian  is absolutely correct regarding the dependencies. I want to add a practical explanation of "Why" this happens, as it is often counter-intuitive.

The Short Answer: Yes, the dataset will still perform a full refresh and it will still query the Sales 2024 source.

The Logic (The "Ingredients" Analogy): Think of your Appended Table as a Cake, and Sales 2024 as the Eggs.

• Even if you decide not to serve the Eggs separately on a plate (Unchecking "Enable Load" or "Include in Refresh" for the individual table)...

• ...whenever you want to bake a fresh Cake (The Appended Table), Power BI must go to the fridge and get the Eggs (Sales 2024) to mix them in.

What that checkbox actually does: Unchecking "Include in report refresh" only stops Power BI from updating the standalone Sales 2024 table itself. However, because your Appended Table depends on Sales 2024, the Power Query engine creates a background query to fetch that 2024 data to build the final appended list.

The Performance Impact: If your goal was to save time by not reloading historical data, unchecking that box does not work for Appended tables in standard Power BI Desktop. The engine still reads the source.

• Solution: To truly stop reading historical data, you would need to implement Incremental Refresh or use Dataflows to stage the history once.

Hope this clears up the confusion!

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[danextian]

Hi @Domenico96 

All referenced queries are still evaluated separately during refresh, even if they are set not to load, as long as the final query that depends on them is loaded and refreshed. A query is only skipped during refresh if it is neither loaded nor referenced, or if it was previously loaded and later excluded from refresh. Please read this: Referencing Power Query queries