Visuals Disappear After Publishing – Issue Only with Merged Query (Shared Folder + BW4)

[abhijeetdt123]

Hi all,
I have a Power BI report that uses two data sources:

1. SAP BW/4HANA
2. Excel files stored on an internal shared folder

Everything works perfectly in Power BI Desktop, but after publishing the report to Teams, one specific visual disappears after a few seconds.

Important:

The issue occurs only for the visual that uses a query from the shared folder that is merged with a BW/4HANA query.

Visuals using only BW data work fine

[v-pgoloju]

Hi @abhijeetdt123,

Just following up to see if the Response provided by community members were helpful in addressing the issue. if the issue still persists Feel free to reach out if you need any further clarification or assistance.

Best regards,
Prasanna Kumar

[v-pgoloju · Accepted solution]

Hi @abhijeetdt123,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Forum Community, and special thanks to @tayloramy  for prompt and helpful responses.

This happens because Power BI Service is more strict than Power BI Desktop when you combine data from different sources. Even though the report works on your machine, the visual disappears in the Service because the merged query  fails while running there. This is usually due to gateway setup, privacy level differences, or missing access to the shared folder.

Make sure both data sources are connected through the same gateway, have the same privacy level, and that the gateway account can access the shared folder. For a more reliable solution, load BW data and shared folder data separately and then merge them after they are loaded, instead of merging the raw sources directly.

Thanks & Regards,

Prasanna Kumar

[abhijeetdt123]

Hi,
thanks a lot for your help!

Your solution worked perfectly for me.

As you suggested, the more reliable approach was to load each data source separately first and then use the Merge Queries function afterward.

Here is what I did for anyone who might face the same issue:

1. Loaded the BW data as one query (Query A) without merging it directly.
2. Loaded the shared folder file as another independent query (Query B).
3. Right‑clicked Query A → Reference to create a clean, dependent query.
4. In that referenced query, I used Merge Queries to merge it with Query B based on the common column (Factor).
5. Expanded only the fields I needed from Query B.

This approach keeps both source queries isolated and stable, and performs the merge only after both datasets are loaded. It solved the issue of my report disappearing after publishing.

Thanks and regards,
Abhijeet Dnyaneshwar Tambole

[tayloramy]

Hi @abhijeetdt123, 

Do you have an on prem data gateway set up and configured so that the service is able to access those excel files? 

What specific visual is giving you problems, or are all visuals that combine data giving you problems? 

[abhijeetdt123]

Yes we do have a gateway.
All those with that particular dataset is giving the error.