How to Consolidate Multiple Connections Into One Connection In Power BI Desktop

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When you import multiple tables and/or worksheets from Excel into Power BI Desktop, you end up with one connection per table/worksheet. Thus, if you import twenty tables you will have twenty connections.

The same applies if you were to import multiple tables from a SQL Server database. The problem arises if the source data changes – for example, an Excel workbook may be moved to OneDrive, or you want to switch from your development to your production SQL Server, in readiness for publishing the Power BI Desktop model to PowerBI.com. You must find and update every single connection. Here is a way of having just the one connection, making life simpler and less error prone.
Steps:

  1. Select the Source query step in Power Query for any of the tables and copy the content of the formula bar.

    step 1


    step 1


  2. Create a new blank query by clicking New Source, Blank Query – by default it's called Query1. Paste into the formula bar, and rename Query1 to Connection. This query will only have the one step, Source. Optionally, you can disable loading this new query by right-clicking and disabling Enable load.

    step 2

    step 2


  3. For every other table apart from Connection, change the Source step to = Connection in the formula bar.

    step 3

    step 3


Now you only need change the connection for the Source step of the new Connection query instead of multiple times as the source data changes.

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