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Multi-Value Parameters In Power Query Online
There’s a nice new feature in Power Query Online (the version of Power Query used in Dataflows): parameters of type List. You can see this as a new option in the Type dropdown in the “Manage...
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Power BI/Power Query Data Privacy Settings And Errors Caused By Nested Values
Over the past few years I’ve blogged and presented extensively on the subject of Power Query’s data privacy settings (see here for a post with links to all this content). I thought I knew everything...
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Setting SQL Server CONTEXT_INFO In Power Query
In my quest to check out every last bit of obscure Power Query functionality, this week I looked into the ContextInfo option on the Sql.Database and Sql.Databases M functions. This option allows you...
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Simulating Slow Data Sources In Power BI
As a postscript to my series on Power BI refresh timeouts (see part 1, part 2 and part 3) I thought it would be useful to document how I was able to simulate a slow data source in Power BI without...
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Expanding Azure Data Explorer Dynamic Columns In Power Query
Azure Data Explorer has a data type called dynamic which can be used to hold scalar values as well as arrays and property bags; you can read about it in the docs here. For example (following on from...
View ArticleSpeed Up Power BI Refresh By Increasing The Amount Of Memory On Your...
If your Power BI dataset needs to connect to an on-premises data source it will need to connect via an On-Premises Data Gateway; what’s more, if you have a Power Query query that combines data from...
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Refreshing Excel Power Query Queries With VBA And Power Automate For Desktop
At the end of last year two new, fairly minor, improvements were made to Excel VBA’s support for Power Query: you can now refresh and delete individual Power Query queries. These methods are available...
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New Options For The Table.Buffer Function In Power Query
The March 2022 release of Power BI Desktop includes some new options for the Table.Buffer M function that can be set in a new second parameter. The options are of type BufferMode.Type; if you look at...
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Understanding Power Query Query Diagnostics Data With The...
I was looking at the output of Power Query’s Query Diagnostics feature recently (again) and trying to understand it better. One of the more confusing aspects of it is the way that the Power Query...
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The Power Query XML Functions, Missing Or Null Values And Inconsistent Schema...
A few months ago one of my colleagues at Microsoft, David Browne, showed me an interesting Power Query problem with how the Xml.Tables and Xml.Document M functions handle null or missing values. I’m...
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Understanding The “We Couldn’t Fold The Expression To The Data Source” Error...
If you’re using DirectQuery mode in Power BI you may occasionally run into the following error message: Couldn’t load the data for this visual OLE DB or ODBC error: [Expression.Error] We couldn’t fold...
View ArticleBuilding A Reporting Solution Using Excel Power Query – Where Are We Now?
Seven years ago I gave a presentation at SQLBits called “Building a reporting solution using Power Query”. You can watch the recording here:...
View ArticleI’m Posting On The Power Query Blog Too!
In the future you’re going see me writing blog posts on the official Power Query blog as well as here on my own personal blog, and indeed the first of these posts went live a few hours ago. It’s on a...
View ArticleAdd ‘Export To Excel’ With Power Query To Your Application
There’s an old joke about “Export to Excel” being the most important feature of any BI tool. In fact, I’d say export to Excel is one of the most important features of any enterprise application of any...
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Monitoring Power Query Online Memory And CPU Usage
Power Query Online is, as the name suggests, the online version of Power Query – it’s what you use when you’re developing Power BI Dataflows for example. Sometimes when you’re building a complex, slow...
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Measuring Power Query CPU Usage During Power BI Dataset Refresh
Some time ago I wrote a post about how optimising for CPU Time is almost as important as optimising for Duration in Power BI, especially if you’re working with Power BI Premium Gen2. This is fairly...
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Gateways And Measuring Power Query CPU Usage During Power BI Dataset Refresh
After last week’s post on measuring Power Query CPU usage during dataset refresh, someone asked an obvious question that I should have addressed: does using a gateway change anything? After all, if...
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Custom Queries For “Detect Data Changes” In Power BI Incremental Refresh
One feature of Power BI incremental refresh I’ve always been meaning to test out is the ability to create your own M queries to work with the “detect data changes” feature, and last week I finally had...
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What-If Analysis With Excel Power Pivot: Automatically Refreshing Individual...
Sometimes, when you’re analysing data, you need to be able to change variables and see what the impact is: for example you might want to see what your profit margin looks like if tax rates are set at...
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Web.Contents, Text Concatenation And Dataset Refresh Errors In Power BI/Power...
One of the most popular topics I’ve ever written about here is the dataset refresh errors you get with dynamic data sources and the Web.Contents function in Power BI (see here and here for example)....
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