What is data refresh failure and common reasons?

< 1 min read

Data refresh failure means Power BI could not successfully update the dataset from source.
Users then see outdated data in reports until refresh is fixed.
Most common reason is expired or changed credentials.
In our project, SQL password reset caused scheduled refresh to fail overnight.
Gateway offline or service stopped also breaks refresh for on-prem sources.
Query folding break or heavy transformation can cause timeout errors.
Schema changes like column rename or datatype change also fail refresh.
API sources fail when access token expires or rate limit reached.
Network connectivity issues between gateway and server are another cause.
We monitored refresh history and email alerts to quickly identify the failure reason.

Power BI Essentials