changes in source excel

[FRANKADVIES]

Hi,

My Power BI Dashboard imports 48 Excel tables (Facebook Insights data), including tables with more than hundred columns (columns for several countires worldwide). When I refresh the Excel data, the number and names of country-columns change, because the number and names of countries change over time. When I try to refresh the data in Power BI I get error messages that columns names of countires 'are not found'. Does it mean that the Power BI model / connection with the Excel tables is static > that Power BI can not recognise changes in number and names of columns in the source tables? Or is there a method to handle changes in the source when refreshing the data in Power BI? ...I tried to add names of new country columns manually in the advanced editor and delete names of country columns that are not present anymore in the source tables - as suggested in previous topics. But doing this for several tables with more than hundred country columns costs me hours each time I refresh the data in Power BI...

Thanks for help in advance!

Kind regards,

Frank

[v-caliao-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @FRANKADVIES,

If you need to refresh the metadata, you need to ellipsis and then click refresh data.

Regards,

Charlie Liao

[ankitpatira]

@FRANKADVIES If you go to power bi desktop query editor (Edit queries) and refresh there first then it will pick up metadata changes in your source file and then hit Close&Apply. Unfortunately if you just hit refresh in pbi desktop or via pbi service that is just the data refresh and won't pick metadata changes ie if your column name changes it will fail.