Schedules/On-demand refresh failed

[haqv]

Hello Power Bi team,

I had a Pbi report with size of 800mb. Data is connected to PBI report via sharepoint folder gateway. My data is about 3Gb-5Gb for 3-year transactions. I publised my report to PBI service to perform scheduled refresh with incremental refresh. However, the first refresh could not be finished (refreshed time last more 4 hours but not yet finished). Refresh on PBI desktop is ok. My current license is premium per user. Please help me to solve this problem.

[v-pgoloju]

Hi @haqv,

We wanted to kindly check in to see if everything is working as expected after trying the suggested solution. If there’s anything else we can assist with, please don’t hesitate to ask.

If the issue is resolved, we’d appreciate it if you could mark the helpful reply as Accepted Solution — it helps others who might face a similar issue.

Warm regards,

Prasanna Kumar

[v-pgoloju]

Hi @haqv,

Just following up to see if the solution provided was helpful in resolving your issue. Please feel free to let us know if you need any further assistance.

If the response addressed your query, kindly mark it as Accepted Solution and click Yes if you found it helpful — this will benefit others in the community as well.

Best regards,

Prasanna Kumar

[v-pgoloju]

Hi @haqv,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community.

and also thanks to @ribisht17  and @Deku and @tharunkumarRTK for prompt and helpful responses.

Your Power BI report's first refresh is slow or not completing in the service because the initial incremental refresh performs a full data load, which is heavy due to your 3–5 GB dataset from a SharePoint folder a source not optimized for large scale refreshes. To resolve this, reduce the initial dataset size by adjusting the RangeStart and RangeEnd parameters (e.g., to only 6 months of data), publish, and perform the first refresh. Once successful, expand the range back to cover the full 3 years. Additionally, optimize your Power Query steps by filtering early, removing unnecessary columns, and avoiding complex transformations before file expansion. If possible, switch to a more efficient data source like OneDrive or Azure Data Lake, or use Power BI Dataflows to stage the data. These steps should improve refresh performance on the Power BI Service under your Premium Per User license.

If you find this response helpful, please consider marking it as the accepted solution and giving it a thumbs-up to support others in the community.

Thank you & regards,
Prasanna Kumar

[ribisht17]

Hi @haqv 

It sounds like your Power BI scheduled refresh is struggling due to the large dataset size and SharePoint folder gateway connection. Since your incremental refresh works fine on Power BI Desktop but fails in Power BI Service, here are some possible solutions:

To improve your Power BI refresh performance, first check query folding to ensure queries are optimized for efficiency. Next, optimize your data model by reducing unnecessary columns, filtering data effectively, and avoiding complex transformations. Verify your gateway performance to ensure that the SharePoint folder connection is handling data smoothly. If needed, increase timeout settings in Power BI Service to allow longer refresh durations. Since you have a Premium Per User (PPU) license, make sure your report is published in a PPU workspace rather than "Other Workspace." Finally, monitor refresh logs in Power BI Service to identify errors or bottlenecks that may be impacting performance.

Additional Resources:

You can find more details on incremental refresh issues and PPU limitations in the Microsoft Fabric Community and Power BI Scheduled Refresh Guide.

Regards,

Ritesh

Community Champion

Please mark the answer if helpful so that it can help others

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[haqv]

1. Data source type is excel files, located on one drive.

2. I'm not sure it is query folding, but i had performed first refresh and also incremental refresh on pbi service successfully (with same amount of data). Howerver, since May 1st, 2025, I cannot perform first refresh after publish updated pbi file to pbi service (update visualization on pbi desktop file).

3. I think, I've performed some trasformations in power query but not too many.

[tharunkumarRTK · Accepted solution]

@haqv 

Incremental refresh with sharepoint or onedrive is not feasible though there are few workarounds, pelase follow the instructions in this video and see if there is anything wrong in the implementation 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uy59RsqgrM

I would suggest you not to perform the full load during the initial refresh, rather perform the bootstraped refresh i.e. truncate the dataset and perform the first load. This will create empty partitions in the power bi service. Then refresh the partitions one after the other. Instructions are here

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/incremental-refresh-xmla#prevent-timeouts-on...

Considering you are using data gateway, and your sources are excel files, make sure your gateway server has sufficient resources to perform the data refresh.

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[Deku]

Folding requires a query engine, so excel does not fold. Therefore incremental refresh will take even longer than full refresh, as each partition will have to import all the data, then filter to the correct date range with powerquery.

[Deku]

• What is the data source type?
• Are you sure it is query folding?
• Are you doing alot of transformations in powerquery?