OneDrive sync not working with "thin" report

[darrenfishell]

I have experienced intermittent issues with "thin" PowerBI reports not refreshing with updates made and saved to OneDrive.

On Friday, I tested this again by opening a PBIX file from my local OneDrive folder, making changes, and then overwriting the existing file in OneDrive using the PowerBI options to save to OneDrive. The report did not pick up the changes over the weekend. 

Given the new options to save directly from OneDrive from PowerBI, I'm curious if there are any specific workflow instructions or limitations to preserving this kind of sync. 

[SaiTejaTalasila]

Hi,

I always recommend users to take SharePoint path and sharepoint connection while connecting to onedrive as it is more reliable than taking the local path from your PC.

[Kletzy]

Had this problem last year August and having it again - thin reports uploaded from sharepoint are no longer syncing changes- is there a solution to this? Last time I had to relink all reports and share new urls.

[darrenfishell]

Just found these related threads that have more detail and response from the support team. For some reason, any datasets connected to OneDrive are not affected by this for me, only reports with live connections. 

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Issues/Publishing-power-BI-broken-when-OneDrive-refresh-is...

[v-tangjie-msft]

Hi @darrenfishell ,

For files loaded from OneDrive, automatic refresh occurs about every hour for data that does not come from an external data source. However, it's important to note that you cannot publish a PBIX file using Power BI Desktop for a model already connected to OneDrive file as it can't be replaced with a local file.

To ensure proper syncing, make sure you're following the recommended workflow:

1. Connect to OneDrive from the Power BI service and retrieve the file.
2. Create a dataset and report based on the file.
3. Enable OneDrive updates in the dataset settings.
4. Modify the file on the OneDrive side.

Please refer to the following documents for more information.

Refresh a dataset from OneDrive or SharePoint Online - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Refresh a dataset created from a .csv file on OneDrive - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Dataset not refreshing from OneDrive File - Microsoft Fabric Community

Best Regards,

Neeko Tang

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

[darrenfishell]

I should add: for any reports that were uploaded via OneDrive, it is only possible to update the report in the browser. Any update in OneDrive does not take effect and any effort to publish from Desktop returns an error that the report cannot be overwritten because it was uploaded from OneDrive or Sharepoint. 

[darrenfishell]

Hi Neeko. Thank you! My problem happens specifically for a PBIX file that has a live connection to a shared dataset from another workspace. It is a "thin" PBIX file. 

My workflow is creating the report in Desktop, saving to OneDrive directly from PowerBI Desktop and then in PowerBI Service selecting Upload from OneDrive for Business. 

The initial upload works just fine, but when I make a change to the PBIX and reupload to OneDrive, it does not trigger an update to the report. This used to work just fine, but has been intermittently causing issues for me in recent months (around the time the direct OneDrive upload became an option in Desktop). 
Can you provide any guidance for "thin" reports specifically? 

[Eklavya]

Hi darrenfishell,

Would you mind checking the following:
1. The setting on the target semantic model that is referenced by the thin report here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/refresh-desktop-file-onedrive#semantic-model...

2. When you update the pbix, do you download the file from PBI Service first or was the original file itself downloaded? can you reproduce it with a new thin report directly created from PBI Desktop?