Refreshing data in Power BI.

When we work in Power BI we will often have to perform a data refresh.

So when we have connected to a data source and imported a copy of the data in our Power BI report, we may find that we have to perform a data refresh, This is where Power BI reconnects to the original data source, so that any changes in that data source will be updated and imported again into Power BI. That way any visuals that we have created will automatically update.

For example, here we have an Excel spreadsheet which has at the minute 10 rows of data. We have a visual in Power BI for example, a card which sums that amount to 12.6 million.

If we were to add in another row of data to our excel workbook then that total would obviously change.

However, Power BI won't do that automatically. What we have to do is perform a refresh.

There are two types of refreshes we can do on on a Schedule, but for now, we're going to focus on an Ad hoc refresh where we can just ask Power BI to connect immediately to the dataset and update the copy with any changes.

Once we have done that the Power BI will be updated and any visuals using that data will update.

Let's do a workout and see how to refresh our data in Power BI.

So the first thing I want to do is connect to my data source in an Excel workbook. So I'm just going to select module two lesson to be and load a copy of that data straight into Power BI.

So we'll select the worksheet click on load.

And I'm just going to create a card visual very quickly here just so that we can see the results. I'm going to expand my table list use the market value field and create a card visual which should give me the grand total of that column.

Now I'm just going to have a quick look at the actual Excel files, so if I just switch back to the Excel file here and open it up.

We can see where that data is coming from.

So we can see here. If we were to sum up all of this data it would come to just under 12.6 million.

So I'm going to add another row of data now I'm not going to worry too much about what exactly that data is. So I'll just do a copy and paste here to get some more information in and I'll just change this to 500,000.

Now I'll save if the changes.

Close it down.

And we look at what happens in Power BI so if I go back to my Power BI your report, I'll see that visual hasn't updated and that's because the Power BI copy of the dataset is using the original data, it hasn't got that change. So I need to refresh. That's quite simple, I'll just go up to the Home tab click on refresh and Power BI will reconnect to the data source and bring in a new copy with the extra row. We can see here the visual has now updated to the new amount.