Memory error: Memory Allocation failure.

[Jim_]

Hi All,

Let me preface this by pointing out that I am still in the learning phase of Power BI and associated skill sets, so please excuse the ignorance.

I am having an issue with a refresh failing on the Service. I have seen a few posts concerning this topic but I am not sure that I have seen any real resolution. The error I am receiving is:

“Memory error: Memory Allocation failure . Try simplifying or reducing the number of queries.”

I am pulling my data from 8 spreadsheets (the largest of which is 1031 KB). In the query editor on the Desktop, I have added approximately 40 calculated columns and duplicated 4 of the tables to model differently.  Before you ask, I cannot make any modifications to the Excel files. 

Would I be better off adding the columns after the data is loaded using the new measure/column feature? I have no idea of what the impact to loading memory looks like given either approach.  Any suggestions, links to resources is greatly appreciated.

Best,

Jim

[ramdasanudas]

get more space in C: drive
or
Try to clean the data load cache: File -> Options and Settings -> Options -> Data Load -> Clear cache and Save the file and Load again

[jairoaol]

I applied correction in both cases and it worked for me:

1. Remove excess columns
2. Do not summarize numeric fields

[Anonymous]

My problem was that the key columns that I was trying to Join the tables on, were auto- characterized by power bi as numerical, with default summarization. When I converted the keys to text, and selected the "do not summarise", I had no problem 🙂

[anoopvnair]

This was an awesome fix to this problem! I spent the entire Sunday resolving this, and I can say this has been a great day! Thank you very much!

[tiztrain]

@Anonymous legend! This is exactly my fix too

[Abhiraj_Pal]

Hello there! I am facing problem while connecting data of 12 months to power bi desktop... A memory allocation error is showing just after importing data of 4 months... Cant understand the reason for this difficulty and need some urgent help...

Abhiraj....

[Nitin01]

Memory error: Memory Allocation failure: Not enough stprage is available to process this command. I am using 32-bit memory, and keep geeting error and try in other laptope with same configuartiin it works. Is there any seeting needs to be update in regards to solve this problem. It is really appreciated if there is any solutions.

[Jim_ · Accepted solution]

I went into the query editor and removed as many columns as possible and the refresh started working again.  Also, I received this nugget of wisdom from Support:

From a memory consumption perspective it is better to add columns in the report developer using the add new measure/column function for optimized performance.

I hope that this can help someone else.

Thanks!!!

Jim

[HavenerTed]

I have a 110 table model including 2 tables that exceed 2 million rows. I am experiencing this error. I have tried so many different solutions and I want to avoid removing columns as much as possible since this model was created by our DBA team. I was wondering if anybody knows if an incremental refresh would help this. 

Thanks!

[gjadal]

Can you elaborate on what this means?

From a memory consumption perspective it is better to add columns in the report developer using the add new measure/column function for optimized performance.

[Jim_]

I believe that this means that there is more of a memory drag when you create columns during the import vs. when you have all of your tables loaded.