Forum Discussion
Data Refresh Issue in Power BI Service with Microsoft List Source
Hi, I've found the solution.
On inspecting the M language, I have 4 merges.
In Desktop all queries often evaluate locally and consistently
In Service. Queries are evaluated independently
Join tables may:
- Not fully refresh in time
- Return slightly different schemas
- Have privacy/firewall differences
The solution is: Before each merge, buffer the lookup tables
SubmittedBuffered = Table.Buffer(Submitted),Another mystery was why it suddenly failed after working for nearly an year.
One potential reason is that Microsoft's backend optimisation updates may have forced the join to occur first before loading the tables.
Hi fb198 ,
Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.
Desktop can often pull the full dataset more permissively, but the Service depends on the underlying API, which enforces limits like pagination and list thresholds. When those limits are hit, the Service may return only part of the data without throwing an error, which is why your refresh succeeds but rows are missing.
Given that your setup worked for a year and only recently started failing, the most likely reason is that the list has grown or the query has crossed a threshold where the Service now handles it differently. In Power BI Service, this typically shows up when pagination isn’t fully handled or when query folding changes due to transformations, causing only a subset of rows to be retrieved.
I suggest you publish a stripped down version of the query with no transformations and just a few columns. If the Service then returns all rows, the issue is in your Power Query steps (folding/pagination). If it still returns fewer rows, you’re hitting an API/threshold limit and need to filter the data (ideally using indexed columns) or adjust how the list is queried.
Best Regards,
Community Support Team