Exchange - Repeated IDs

[aferrando]

Hi! I'm quite new on Power BI and I just found a weird problem that I'm not really sure what is causing it.

We are interested in monitoring data from an specific e-mail account in order to know (through some rules and filters) if a task has been done correctly or not. If the task has not been completed, we want to provide the direct link to the specific e-mail from where we get the information.

The fact is, when we load data from Exchange, appears a field called "Id" (through which we get the direct link to the message), which it is supposed to be unique, but it is not:

Even though you cannot see the entire ID, some of them are the same.

Due to sometimes the ID is repeated, we obtain the same link for different messages (which of course redirect to the same message).

We attatch here some example where you can see the same ID and a different message:

We covered some information due to privacy

Does anybody knows why is this happening? Is this problem caused by Power BI or by Exchange? Any solution for this?

More details:

- We receive around 200 emails per day and almost all at the same time (between 1:00 to 9:00 am)

- If the id is repeated, is repeated only two times and usually in the same day (difference between them about 3-4 hours usually)

- Apparently there is no relation among the messages with the same Id

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I have the same problem when importing mails, did you find a sollution for this?

[SanderVanDamme]

Hi,

The problem seems to be due to minor and capital letters.

I created a new column in powerquery to convert it to Binary to have unique values.

Key = Text.Lower(Binary.ToText(Text.ToBinary([Id])))

[Anonymous]

This works perfectly. Thanks.

[SanderVanDamme]

Hello,

I see the same problem when importing tasks, did you find a sollution for this?

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@aferrando,

What version of Power BI Desktop do you use? And do you import data from Mail table?

I make a test in Power BI Desktop June release(2.59.5135.781) and unable to reproduce this issue, I get unique IDs in my scenario. Could you please check if there are any settings in your Exchange?

Regards,
Lydia

[aferrando]

Hi @v-yuezhe-msft;

thank you for your answer. My Power BI Destop version is the same as yours (2.59.5135.781 64-bit (june 2018)).

We've continued investigating and we found that the problem is caused by Power BI. When we check the data in Power Query Editor, we don't find any duplicated value (in fact, there appears the correct e-mail URL). However, once we "Close & Apply" in editor, the data that is load in Power BI is different, and is here when appears duplicated data.

Top: Table data; Middle&Bottom: Power Query Editor
We have tested with others emails and has happened the same (even though was only one case).

Is there any chance to solve this issue?
If you need more information or examples, do not hesitate to ask for it.

Thanks

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@aferrando,

I am still unable to reproduce this issue. Please create the following measures in your table and check if their values are same.



Regards,
Lydia

[aferrando]

These are our results:

Thank you for all your assistance

[v-yuezhe-msft]

@aferrando,

I would recommend you open a ticket in Power BI support.


Regards,
Lydia