Refresh error duplicate values in the table

[Naomig2088]

Hi,

I'm experiencing a refresh error that states that there are duplicate values in a column in the data table.

"Column 'StartofMonthLeaveDate' in Table 'Leavers for Turnover (2)' contains a duplicate value '01/10/2020 00:00:00' and this is not allowed for columns on the one side of a many-to-one relationship or for columns that are used as the primary key of a table."

It's correct that the duplicates exist as I have grouping based on two factors (date and department), so there has to be duplicates (screenshot of table below).

Can anyone suggest a way around this please?

Many thanks,

Naomi

[Naomig2088]

Thank you for your reply. Would adding an index column as the primary key column work?

[halfglassdarkly]

Only if the index in both tables corresponds to the record with the same department / date combination. You'd be better off creating a new key that concatenates the  department/date.

An alternative if you have access to edit the tables in PowerQuery and if you don't actually need your leavers data in a seperate table would be to merge the two tables in PowerQuery prior to loading into PowerBI since unlike PowerBI, PowerQuery does support joining tables using composite keys.

[Naomig2088]

Forgive me, I'm fairly new to Power BI. How would I go about creating a new key that concatenates the  department/date please?

[halfglassdarkly]

In PowerBI, just create a new calculated column in each table, e.g.

UniqueID = 'Leavers for Turnover'[StartofMonthLeaveDate] &  'Leavers for Turnover'[Positions V2 (2). DepartmentNumber]

You'll need to swap out the table name 'Leavers for Turnover' for the relevant table name when adding it to the other table.

Alternatively you could create the new key in PowerQuery using merge columns see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/merge-columns-power-query-80ec9e1e-1eb6-4048-b500-d5d42d9... 

Then once you have your new key in each table you'll need to remap the two tables using the new key in the schema view.

[Naomig2088]

Hi,

Thank you. I've managed to resolve the error so that the refresh is working but I think it's my grouping that's causing issues...

As the table is grouped using StartMonthLeaveDate and Department it's not producing the correct results are there are duplicates for StartMonthLeaveDate. Is there a way to group on StartMonthLeaveDate while retaining Department information please? This is what my grouping looks like currently:

[halfglassdarkly]

You either need to change the cardinality of the table relationship from many to one to many to many (but many to many relationship isn't usually a good idea) or create a new key in both tables that concatenates your date and department values and remap the relationship between the tables using the new key.