Is anyone seeing issues refreshing workbooks in the service?

[edhans]

Came in this morning and all 4 of our workbooks we have in the Power BI service failed to refresh. All use the on-prem enterprise gateway. The workbooks are in Sharepoint, and in different workspaces.

No reports failed, and I cannot get any of the workbooks to manually refresh. It says "preparing to refresh" then fails to do anything.

Wondering if anyone else is seeing this.

[v-danhe-msft]

Hi @edhans ,

How could you get the workbook? From the service to get file with the sharepoint and choose "Connect"?

Based on my test, it could work on my side:

And it seemed not to have to configure gateway? Could you please offer me more information?

Regards,

Daniel He

[edhans]

The workbook is in the service. It has a Power Pivot data model in it and the service refreshes it for me. I have 4 of these in three different workspaces, and they all failed again this morning. The workbooks are in Sharepoint Online (office 365)

The data is on an on-prem SQL server, so a gateway is in use.

Doing a manual refresh does nothing. The error given is usually what happens if someone has the workbook open when the refresh starts, but no one is in these workbooks at this time, certainly not all 4 at once. Different departments have access to different workspaces. And when that does happen, I just manually fire off a refresh and it works. 

This just started Sunday, May 5. And the manual refresh does not work. It says "preparing to refresh" and then the dialog box goes away and nothing happens. It doesn't even show as a failed refresh.

No manual refresh attempts are even recorded.

[aeckes]

I am seeing this too.  Just started happening very recently with no changes on my end.  Frustrating how this works and then doesn't so frequently.

[edhans]

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@aeckes wrote:

I am seeing this too.  Just started happening very recently with no changes on my end.  Frustrating how this works and then doesn't so frequently.

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Yup. Today, 2 worked, 2 failed. No explanation, and manually refreshing doesn't work.

[aeckes]

@edhans checking in - any luck lately? I am still getting many fails, error message "Workbook updates are in progress" while I am certain this is not the case.

[aeckes]

@v-danhe-msft how can I debug this?  

[v-danhe-msft]

Hi @aeckes ,

This problem may a known issue and you could refer to below message from PG:

For my understanding if the workbook is modified during the Power BI refresh it will fail right?

So if the modifications are completed in the workbook and after that if we do the refresh in Power BI service will the refresh is successful for the same workbook which failed previously?

Because CX has bunch of workbooks which all are failing with the same error and also cx states that there is no refreshes happening in workbook during Power BI refresh and also claimed that this issue is coming from 05/06/2019 which used to  be refresh successfully.

Regards,

Daniel He

[aeckes]

@v-danhe-msft My workbooks are stored on a corporate sharepoint folder.  I understand that if they are open when the refresh is triggered, it will fail.  The issue is that even overnight when no one is accessing the workbooks, the scheduled refresh fails. I do not believe the error message is correct.

[edhans]

The error message is 100% bogus. One of these workbooks isn't even used anymore. It became obsolete April 30 when a project was done, but I never went and deleted it. Now I am using it as my test case because I am 100% sure it is never open, and the other workbooks aren't open either as the refresh is when everyone is off of work. None of these workbooks are doing someting so critical someone is pinging them at 11pm.

[aeckes]

@edhans Thanks for sticking with this and posting updates. Please let me know what comes as a result of the ticket you filed.

[edhans]

The Power BI team wants me to report it to the Excel team. Somehow the refreshing of a workbook in the service is an Excel team issue???? I'll try to open a ticket with them.

[edhans · Accepted solution]

The Power BI team finally got back to me after acknowledging this was a Power BI service issue and not an Excel issue. It is a known issue, a fix is being worked on, but there is no ETA. 

Possible workaround is:

• copy the workbook to a non-OneDrive/Sharepoint location.
• Delete the workbook in the service and on OneDrive/Sharepoint.
• Copy file back to OneDrive/Sharepoint.
• Republish.

I'm not fooling with that personally, but if they are critical to your workflow, give it a shot. For me, it is easier to open the workbooks in Excel and refresh/save there as I only have 2 of the 4 published workbooks providing useful data currently. The other projects are dormant right now.

[aeckes]

The workaround was successful for me. First refresh thru the service in a few weeks.

@edhans Thanks for keeping the thread alive.  Best of luck.

[edhans]

FYI - there is now a targeted late June 2019 update to fix this.

[Vinothsusai]

Hi,

I have the same issue in excel online (stored in one drive) and followed the workaround. But it still persists. Please advise.

Thanks

Vinoth SUAINATHAN

[edhans]

I filed ticket 14399576. we'll see what happens.

[edhans]

So what is being done? There is nothing on the Awareness page of this being a known issue.

3 failures this morning...

[edhans]

no. 5 failures this morning. All workbook refresh failings.

I just need to make time to open a ticket.

[aeckes]

@edhans Thanks for the reply.  FYI I tried reinstalling the on-prem personal gateway (all connection tests successful) to version May 2019 build 2.  Still no luck.