Forum Discussion
help in refresh in Power BI service
Hi Anonymous ,
Thanks for the update. The issue might be due to the old partitions that weren’t fully cleared before the refresh. When you disable incremental refresh and republish, the Service still retains historical partitions unless you explicitly delete them. Try these below steps by using some sample data.
Disable incremental refresh in Desktop and refresh locally.
Publish to Service, overwrite dataset.
In Power BI Service > Dataset Settings > Incremental refresh history,
Delete all partitions (this step is critical).
Trigger a full refresh in Service, this rebuilds schema without incremental logic.
Re-enable incremental refresh in Desktop, set RangeStart/RangeEnd, and publish again.
Run the refresh again in Service.
Hope this helps.
Thank you.
Super UserHi Anonymous,
This behavior is common in incremental refresh models and usually caused by schema caching or metadata mismatch between:
The dataset already published in Power BI Service, and
The Power Query / M model currently inside your .pbix.
In short, Power BI Service is trying to reuse an old partition schema that still references the removed column (UPD_DATE) even though the query doesn’t anymore.
✅ Verified Solutions
Option 1: Force a full schema refresh
In Power BI Desktop:
Go to Model view → Table properties → Incremental refresh.
Temporarily disable incremental refresh for that table.
Refresh the dataset locally (to rebuild schema metadata).
Publish again to the Service (overwrite the dataset).
Once it refreshes successfully, re-enable incremental refresh and publish again.
This forces the Power BI Service to drop existing partitions and rebuild them with the new schema.
Option 2: Clear cached partitions in Service
If the issue persists:
In Power BI Service → Workspace → Datasets → Settings → Incremental refresh history
delete all existing partitions.Then trigger a full refresh (Service will re-create all partitions using the updated M query).
Option 3: Check for hidden references
Sometimes, a column removed in the UI may still be referenced in:
A custom step in Power Query (#"Removed Columns" or later steps that still refer to UPD_DATE)
A parameter used in incremental refresh (e.g., filtering on RangeStart / RangeEnd).
A measure or calculated column that indirectly touches that field.
Try this check:
Open Advanced Editor in Power Query.
Press Ctrl+F, search for UPD_DATE.
If you find it anywhere, delete or replace it explicitly.
Option 4: Rebind or republish
If the schema mismatch persists even after the above:
Delete the dataset from the workspace.
Re-publish the .pbix as a new dataset name (fresh model binding).
Configure credentials and incremental refresh again.
This is sometimes necessary because the Mashup Engine in the Service caches old column mappings even if the query has changed.
Docs :
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/connect-data/incremental-refresh-troubleshoot
Hope it can help you !
Best regards,
Antoine
Thank you AntoineW , this issue is noticed in PROD workspace with other reports without incremental refresh when I update data source credentials it works fine then the next refresh will break.
I can't do a full refresh since it exceeds the 5 hours timeout