At last, the Power Query update I’ve been waiting for has finally landed in the download site. This is version 2.24, and sets my parameter tables technique back to a working state!
You can download version 2.24 direct from Microsoft’s site by clicking here.
Why is this Power Query Update important?
This Power Query update is pretty important for a few reasons:
- It fixes the issues with the MultipleUnclassified/Trusted error on refreshing parameter tables (as I blogged about here)
- If you’re running version 2.22 it also fixes issues with loading to the data model
Does this Power Query Update have any NEW features?
Of course it does!
- Improvements to ODBC Connector.
- Navigator dialog improvements.
- Option to enable Fast Data Load vs. Background Data Load.
- Support for Salesforce Custom environments in Recent Sources list.
- Easier parsing of Date or Time values out of a Text column with Date/Time information.
- Unpivot Other Columns entry in column context menu.
The big thing to me, though, is the Power Query update fixes the critical bug(s) listed above. If you’re running 2.22 or 2.23 I highly recommend updating. (And if you’re running an older version I’d update too, as there is new functionality released every month.)
4 thoughts on “Important Power Query Update Available”
Hi Ken,
Thanks for staying up to date on power query
I see from your description there is a Fast Data Load vs Background Data Load
The help description for this new feature is a little sparse - and I can not find a more descriptive one on the web.
My issue is powerpivot data refresh all speed - if I walk through each powerquery linked table in Powerpivot and refresh each table individually, most tables take a few seconds and one takes a couple of minutes. However, if I choose the Update All Data Refresh, the process rarely completes - it can be hours and it is still going.
So I am hoping this new feature might address this problem.
If not, any suggestions as to why Data Refresh All grinds while individual Refresh tables is quite fast?
Thanks
Hi Charlie,
There's a more full writeup of the new features on the Office Blog: https://blogs.office.com/2015/07/15/6-updates-in-power-query-for-excel/
With regards to that specific piece, they say:
"Option to enable Fast Data Load versus Background Data Load
We added an option for users to control whether the query should be loaded to the workbook in the background or use the new “Fast Data Load” option to accelerate the query download. The default behavior is “Background Data Load,” but now users can instead choose the “Fast Data Load” mode in the Options dialog. When loading a query using the “Fast Data Load” mode, your query will take less time to load, however, Excel may be unresponsive for long periods of time during the upload."
Let me know if it helps!
Hi Ken, wrt Fast Data Load I'm asking myself: in what scenarios should I use this / where does this benefit over the standard option?
Personally, I try to avoid it. It avoids issues with differing privacy levels, but I try to focus on building the queries correctly to deal with this.
Honestly, beyond that, I'm not sure how much speed increase you'd see by using it.