Incremental Refresh - Archive load times out

[satkin2]

I'm trying to load a 60 month archive, then have a 1 month incremental refresh of my data.

When trying to load the archive on first publish however the server times out (2hrs), so it can't bring my whole history through.

Can anyone advise how best to load the big archive please?

Data is sourced from a SQL server, filtering as early as possible in the Power Query process.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @satkin2,

Thank you for reaching out in Microsoft Community Forum.

Thank you @lbendlin  for the helpful response.

Please follow below steps to acheive this;

1.Break the 60-month archive into smaller chunks (e.g., by year) and load them separately to avoid timeouts.

2.Create a pre-filtered staging table in SQL Server for the 60-month data to reduce load time and complexity.

3.If using Power BI Premium, consider hybrid tables — import archive data and use DirectQuery for recent months.

4.Once the archive is loaded, turn on incremental refresh to manage future loads efficiently.

Please continue using Microsoft community forum.

If you found this post helpful, please consider marking it as "Accept as Solution" and give it a 'Kudos'. if it was helpful. help other members find it more easily.

Regards,
Pavan.

[lbendlin]

Use bootstrapping and fill the historical partitions manually, one by one.

Troubleshoot incremental refresh and real-time data - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/incremental-refresh-xmla#prevent-timeouts-on...