Incremental data load in Power BI file

Marico

Hi,

I have a Power BI file with around 70-80M rows of data. The data is already summarized at the back-end and no further data compression at the database level can be done.

I was wondering if any is anyway to incrementally load the data in Power BI based on a date so as to not impact the performance of the report.

v-tejrama

Hello @Marico ,

Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.

Yes, you can achieve this in Power BI using the Incremental Refresh feature. This is particularly helpful for large datasets like yours with 70–80 million rows. Incremental Refresh lets you update only new or changed data based on a date column, rather than refreshing the entire dataset each time, which boosts performance and saves time. You set this up in Power BI Desktop, but keep in mind that incremental loading only works after publishing to the Power BI Service. In Desktop, it still does a full refresh for previewing.

To set it up, create two DateTime parameters in Power Query: RangeStart and RangeEnd. Filter your date column using these parameters, then load the data. Right-click your table and choose “Incremental Refresh” to define how much data to keep and how often to refresh. After publishing to Power BI Service, the refreshes will run as configured.

This feature is available in Power BI Pro, Premium Per User (PPU), or Premium capacity workspaces. Ensure your date column is in Date/Time format and properly indexed for best performance. If these requirements are met, Incremental Refresh should work effectively for your large dataset.

If you need detailed setup instructions, feel free to ask.

Thank you,

Tejaswi.

Marico

Can you share detailed steps with screenshots and a sample file?

v-tejrama

Hi again @Marico ,

After reviewing Microsoft’s official documentation on Incremental Refresh in Power BI and the community post at Community Post on Incremental Refresh, I can confirm that Incremental Refresh can absolutely be implemented using a .pbix file. There are a few key steps to follow:

Set up the RangeStart and RangeEnd parameters in Power Query.

Apply filters with these parameters to a date column in your fact table.

Once published to Power BI Service, configure the Incremental Refresh policy in the dataset settings. The initial refresh will process all historical data, but subsequent refreshes will only update the latest partition as specified (such as the last 7 days).

I have shared the incremental document link, the Microsoft link, and also included screenshots. Please review them.

Incremental refresh for semantic models in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Solved: Incremental Load is a Power BI - Microsoft Fabric Community

Thank you.