Not all table columns loaded to Power BI

[Moustafa_Toulan]

Only 57 out of 98 columns are loaded through the query HERE in Power BI. Does anyone know how can this be fixed?

[SamF]

I have the same issue! I’m using the M code provided by Airtable and it works fine, except that only about half of the fields are being captured. There seems to be no correlation to data type, column order, anything. It affects all bases. Any help would be appreciated!

[SamF]

Aha! After some testing I determined that the columns weren’t being imported because they contained no data. I had built the structure in Airtable but hadn’t populated it with much data, and once I had entered some input, the columns were available through Power Query. Hope that helps!

[Moustafa_Toulan]

Thanks Sam for the feedback! in my case the columns I’m missing contains plenty of data.

[Bruno_Trivellat]

Similar issue here. Columns with almost no data wheren’t being imported, since I populated the empty fields with dummy values they showed up in Power Query.

[Joanna_Parker]

Same here, had this issue with Excel too. Tried different field types to see if there’s any pattern, but no luck.

So, do I need to populate empty fields with something in order for the column to be pulled through?

[SamF]

Yep, I suggest you populate each column with a “TEST” value or similar, and then in PQ you can filter it right out to ensure you’ve got the right data.

[Hidro01]

So according to airtable tutorial on how to load data on PowerBI here

"PowerBI will only load a field if the first record coming from Airtable has data in that field. So if the field is empty, then it won’t show up in Power BI."

This mean if the first record in the database has a field that is empty  that field wont showup, even if in later records that field has data.

Anyone know how to avoid this? besides creating the first record with fake data?

[mario_lamban]

I'm wondering if there's a better solution than populating the first record with dummy text. This a big hiccup for the integration between Airtable and PowerBi. Any solutions?

[Udi_Golan]

Hi Everyone,

After some research + a lot of trial and error, here is a solution.
No need for dummy row or any other change at AT.

Replace this 

 #"Expanded Record Fields" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(
     #"Reordered Columns", "_airtableRecordFields",
     Record.FieldNames(#"Reordered Columns"{0}[_airtableRecordFields]),
     Record.FieldNames(#"Reordered Columns"{0}[_airtableRecordFields]))
in
    #"Expanded Record Fields"

With this

#"Expanded Record Fields" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(

#"Reordered Columns", "_airtableRecordFields",

List.Distinct(List.Combine(List.Transform(List.Transform(Table.ToRecords(#"Reordered Columns"),each Record.Field(_,"_airtableRecordFields")), each Record.FieldNames(_)))),

List.Distinct(List.Combine(List.Transform(List.Transform(Table.ToRecords(#"Reordered Columns"),each Record.Field(_,"_airtableRecordFields")), each Record.FieldNames(_)))))
in
#"Expanded Record Fields"

This solution iterates through all the records and merges the columns that appear in each record (then uses distinct).

Thanks to dofinity.com for sponsoring this.
Enjoy!