Forum Discussion
Questions about incremental refresh behavior
Hi Lullabit13,
Thank you for reaching out in Microsoft Community Forum.
Thank you GilbertQ for the helpful response.
1. Historical records do not update automatically, If a record moves to a historical partition and its date changes later, Power BI will not detect it unless you manually refresh historical partitions (via XMLA in Premium).
2. Deleted records within the refresh window are removed automatically, as Power BI drops and reloads those partitions. However, records outside the refresh window remain in Power BI, since historical partitions are never refreshed automatically.
3. 'Detect Data Changes' does not track deletions. It only refreshes partitions where changes are detected, meaning deleted records may remain in Power BI unless the entire partition is refreshed.
Please continue using Microsoft community forum.
If you found this post helpful, please consider marking it as "Accept as Solution" and give it a 'Kudos'. if it was helpful. help other members find it more easily.
Regards,
Pavan.
Hi Lullabit13
If a record has already moved to historical partition, the updated data will not be updated because historical partitions are not automatically processed. You can put a process in place in order to then reprocess those historical partitions.
You have to use a single date column for incremental refresh, and can't go changing the date columns because potentially you could have overlapping data. What's then means you have duplicate data.
There is an option to use detect data changes, which will allow you then to reprocess partitions where the data has changed. Here are more details. Incremental refresh for semantic models in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn
Hi GilbertQ
I get that switching between different date columns for incremental refresh can cause overlapping data and duplicates. But what if I’m using the same column and a record that was already in the historical partition gets a new date? (e.g from 2024-12-31 to 2025-02-24) Would Power BI ignore it, or would it get pulled back into the dataset?
Also, if a record within the refresh window gets deleted from the source database, does Power BI remove it in the next refresh? I think it does since it drops and reloads the partition. But if I turn on the 'Detect Data Changes' option, my understanding is that the deleted record would stay in Power BI since it only updates partitions where changes are detected. Is that right?
Hi Lullabit13,
Thank you for reaching out in Microsoft Community Forum.
Thank you GilbertQ for the helpful response.
1. Historical records do not update automatically, If a record moves to a historical partition and its date changes later, Power BI will not detect it unless you manually refresh historical partitions (via XMLA in Premium).
2. Deleted records within the refresh window are removed automatically, as Power BI drops and reloads those partitions. However, records outside the refresh window remain in Power BI, since historical partitions are never refreshed automatically.
3. 'Detect Data Changes' does not track deletions. It only refreshes partitions where changes are detected, meaning deleted records may remain in Power BI unless the entire partition is refreshed.
Please continue using Microsoft community forum.
If you found this post helpful, please consider marking it as "Accept as Solution" and give it a 'Kudos'. if it was helpful. help other members find it more easily.
Regards,
Pavan.
