Adding commentary column to linked dataflow table in Excel and not erasing after refresh

[eanderson614]

I am trying to create a table in Excel that is linked to a dataflow in Power BI where the data refreshes live from the Power BI dataflow. The part I am struggling with is how to add a column to the table in Excel where I can write commentary and it not get cleared every time I refresh the data connection in Excel. Right now, every time I click the refresh button, the A/R commentary column I added gets cleared out, but the column remains.

My ultimate goal is to the send this commentary data back into the dataflow and merge it with the A/R data table. This way, I can present commentary in my Power BI reports and the Excel file serves as the one source of truth for A/R commentary. Any help is appreciated as this would be a huge win for our team and a big efficiency gain. Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Hi @eanderson614 ,

To preserve your commentary during data refreshes in Excel, you could try:

Create a separate table for your commentary.
Use Power Query to merge this commentary table with your main data table based on a unique identifier.
Load the merged data back into Excel.
This way, your commentary will remain intact even after refreshing the data from the Power BI dataflow.

Best Regards,

Stephen Tao

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[eanderson614]

Thank you for your reply. I have tried this but the issue I have is the commentary table will constantly have new customers added to it. So I would have to make sure all customers are on the commentary table constantly which is a lot of manual effort. Any thoughts on this?