Refresh problem - Unable to combine data

[Cado_one]

Hi all,

I know there are already many topics regarding this issue but the common solution doesn't work in my case and I can't explain the reason.

When refreshing on Power BI Desktop everything is fine, when doing it on Power BI Service refresh fails and return the following error : 

• [Unable to combine data] Section1/[Query]/[Last step of the query] references other queries or steps, so it may not directly access a data source. Please rebuild this data combination.

To work around this problem, I followed the following Ken Puls blog : https://www.excelguru.ca/blog/2015/03/11/power-query-errors-please-rebuild-this-data-combination/

However, even after staging queries as recommended the error is still present !

Here are my queries (Query 1's refresh is okay but the second and third queries's refresh give the error) :

                       Query1                                                      Query2                                       Query3

The "Source" step of Query3 is Query2 and the "Source" of Query2 is Query1

A few details :

- The Query1 datasource is a web API GET request

- The "Invoked Custom Function" step in Query2 apply a web API GET request on each ID of the column resulting from Query1

- The "Merged Queries" step in Query3 merge with an other table which is also built on a web API GET request

- Every data in the final result comes from the same API

Where did I miss something during my rebuild operations ?

Thanks in advance !

Best regards,

Cado

[v-jingzhang]

Hi @Cado_one 

Maybe you can refer to this topic: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/unable-to-combine-data-Please-rebuild-this-data-combination...

[Cado_one · Accepted solution]

Hi @v-jingzhang 

Thank you for the suggestion link, 

the solution was to put every stages used for the query in a single BIG query.

Not elegant but it works.

Thanks !

Cado