How to Automatically Refresh Data in Power BI Desktop
Power BI Desktop allows users to create visually appealing and interactive reports based on data from various sources. To ensure that your reports always contain the most up-to-date information, you can set up automatic data refresh. Here’s how you can achieve this:
- Open your Power BI Desktop application.
- Click on the “File” tab in the top-left corner of the window.
- Select “Options and settings” from the drop-down menu.
- Choose “Options” from the list.
- In the left-hand pane, navigate to “Global” and then “Data Load”.
- Check the box next to “Enable parallel loading of tables”. This option allows tables to be loaded simultaneously, improving the overall performance.
- Next, select the “Scheduled Refresh” tab on the left-hand side.
- Click on the “Keep your data up to date” checkbox to enable automatic refresh.
- Specify the refresh frequency by selecting the desired option from the drop-down menu. You can choose between “Daily”, “Weekly”, or “Monthly”.
- If choosing “Weekly” or “Monthly”, you will be asked to provide the specific day and time for the refresh to occur.
- Power BI Desktop also allows you to customize the refresh options further. You can select multiple days of the week or specific dates in a month for refresh, exclude certain time periods, or set a custom refresh interval.
- Once you have set up the refresh frequency and options, click on the “OK” button to save the changes.
- Now, whenever you open your Power BI Desktop file, the data will be automatically refreshed according to your specified schedule.
Example:
Let’s say you have a Power BI report that analyzes sales data from an online store. By setting up automatic data refresh, the report will always reflect the latest sales numbers, even if new data is added to the source database daily. This ensures that your insights and visualizations are always up to date.