Power BI Desktop data refresh

Hi sokninn ,

The Power BI Desktop is designed as a development tool, and the Power BI Desktop files are static files. As such an auto-refresh doesn't make sense and isn't practical. If you make changes on the desktop file, there is no immediate link between that change and anything you have published.  When you next publish, it will overwrite whatever dataset/reports you have created with the same name.  Most of the time you are doing this with just changes to an existing files, so generally things like Dashboards often continue to work.

While The Power BI Service is like a sharing and consuming portal, the online environment can be connected to a gateway that can implement the data refresh. If you make changes online , and you want to keep those changes also work on the desktop file, you can select the dataset online and select the option "Download .pbix", which will show the change in Desktop once you open the pbix file.

In a word ,the change on Power BI Service will not sync change on Desktop for the same original created and published pbix file.

If you need the data of Power BI Desktop is the same with data source, the way to implement data refresh will be different according the way of getting data. when your data is gotten in Import mode, once the data source changed, you need to import the changed data again. When your data is gotten in DirectQuery mode or Connect live mode , you can click the refresh button under Home ribbon to get the newest data of data source.

You can learn more: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/refresh-data .

Best Regards,

Amy

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