Excel Online – Refresh Power Query – Failed -- Help

Brass Contributor

I have an Excel file that I wand to be able to do a Data -> Refresh All Connections to update a very simple Power Query script. I have 4 Excel Sheets and a simple Table in each. I have a Power Query script setup to import each table them Append all 4 tables then put the Table on another sheet filtering out NULL. Unfortunately when doing a Refresh online instead of the desktop I get the error message “External Data Refresh Failed – We were unable to refresh one or more data connections in this workbook. The following connections failed to refresh.”

 

I only a found a few very old references to this issue and was hoping someone had a suggestion. In my mind it is not even an External connection as everything is contained in a single sheet. I know Excel desktop sometimes says it is an External connection also if not in a trusted folder. However it seems like there should be a way for this to refresh on the web if all internal to the same file.

Any help thoughts or workarounds?

 

Thanks

 

Alan

6 Replies

@Alan Jones As far as I know, you can NOT refresh PQ queries in Excel for the web. You can see that the file contains queries but you can not create, review, edit or refresh them.

@Alan Jones 

In addition about error message. Excel for web currently could refresh external connections. These are PivotTable connections to Power BI dataset, data model or cache. They are all external.

 

If Excel tries to refresh Power Query it looks for external connection for it, finds nothing and returns such error.

 

At least that's my understanding.

it is interesting that they have Power Query online for other things but they don't at least have Power Query refresh for simple stuff for Excel Online.

it is interesting that they have Power Query online for other things but they don't at least have Power Query refresh for simple stuff for Excel Online.
This is so annoying. I also have a very basic file with two tables, then I use Power Query to merge them into one and into the data model to do a simple pivot table. It works perfectly on my desktop, but gives me the above mentioned error when trying to Update All on line. So does this really means I need to download the file everytime, UpdateAll on laptop and then upload again!!! ???? It seems to be the only solution.