Include in report refresh

[pmaass]

My request for help to the community is because I have 3 Excel files with the sales data for January, March and April. I have appended them in PQ creating the new Months query. For the January, February, and March queries, I have deactivated the Enable load to report option and, conversely, the Months query is the only one in which I keep the Enable load to report option active. Regarding query updates, January, March I set them by unchecking Include in report update (because they are historical). As I am interested in March if it is updated, because there are possibilities that its data consider modifications, I leave the Include in report refresh configuration active. Finally, the Months query is loaded keeping Include in report refresh active, because we want it to consider modifications that could be made in March.

Well, to my surprise, this doesn't work and if I modify January, February or March it still accesses these data sources and refreshes the Desktop report, when I activate the Refresh button in Power BI. I tried not to go in to see the alterations in January and February and only do it in March.

What do you advise me to do to achieve it?

Please, I will appreciate your support.

Pablo

[v-kkf-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @pmaass ,

Unchecking "Include in report refresh" will stop refreshing the query (in Desktop and Service), yet if you reference this query in another query, it disregards the setting and refreshes it again.

The two workarounds are:

1. Use incremental refresh. But its refresh partition is dynamically changing, and it can't be kept as refreshing March data only.

Incremental refresh for files in a Folder or SharePoint – Power BI 

2. Use DAX instead of M code to combine these tables, and then hide the tables in the model. And uncheck "Include in report refresh" for the January and February tables. This way when the merged table is refreshed only the March data will be refreshed.

If the problem is still not resolved, please provide detailed error information or the expected result you expect. Let me know immediately, looking forward to your reply.
Best Regards,
Winniz
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Vijay_A_Verma]

Actually this is something which works in Power BI Desktop but not in Power BI service. Hence, if you unheck Include in report refresh - The functionality works only in Power BI Desktop and it will not have any impact in Power BI Service i.e. if you refresh report in Power BI service, this will still refresh all the queries even through Include in report refresh is unchecked.

It has been reported to Power BI Team through an idea logged here @ https://ideas.powerbi.com/ideas/idea/?ideaid=c464fb1a-25e4-4c93-ba72-288a6ff12127 

I would recommend that you should also vote for it. I just voted there and my vote number was 725.