new warning showing in service after refresh for issue that has been around for years

[UOLandrewdale]

I just noticed today that from the 26 March 2026 I started getting a warning showing against a particular PBI report refresh in the service. I didn't get an email about it as it does not cause a refresh failure and I assume it is not a "critical" warning.

The warning was:

Refresh completed with warnings.
Cannot order '<oii>AttendanceSummary (36370)</oii>'[<oii>EventWeek (36377)</oii>] by [<oii>WeekMonthYearOrder (36385)</oii>] because at least one value in [<oii>EventWeek (36377)</oii>] has multiple distinct values in [<oii>WeekMonthYearOrder (36385)</oii>]. For example, you can sort [City] by [Region] because there is only one region for each city, but you cannot sort [Region] by [City] because there are multiple cities for each region.

This report was written many years ago, and this sort one column by another column functionality was fine when it was introduced, but now has many more years of data in it so we are now getting duplicate values. If I open the last version of the report from 20 March 2026, or an older one from October 2025, then I do get the same warning in the client that is showing in the service but only if I go and look at this particular column and check its sort by column, but I don't get a warning from anywhere else in the report, I have to go and look at the sort by column function.

So, my questions are:

1) has the service been update to report more warnings?
2) where can I see warnings in the client without having to go and look at each column?

[v-pnaroju-msft · Accepted solution]

Thankyou, @GilbertQ and @JLog for your responses.

Hi UOLandrewdale,

Based on our understanding, the warning occurs because the Sort by Column requirement might be violated. This requirement enforces a strict 1:1 mapping between the display column EventWeek and the sort column WeekMonthYearOrder. However, due to additional historical data, one EventWeek might now map to multiple WeekMonthYearOrder values, resulting in duplicate mappings.

At present, there is no centralized warning pane in Desktop for issues related to Sort by Column validation. One possible approach might be to ensure a true 1:1 mapping by cleaning the data. For example, you may aggregate the data in Power Query so that each EventWeek has a single consistent WeekMonthYearOrder value, for example, using MIN/MAX.

Additionally, please refer to the links provided below:
Sort One Column by Another Column in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn
Data refresh in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

We hope the information provided might help resolve the issue. Should you have any further queries, kindly feel free to contact the Microsoft Fabric community.

Thank you.

[UOLandrewdale]

hi @v-pnaroju-msft 

thank you for your comments. Yes I need to fix my object to make the sort column unique, but I didn't know the uniqueness had broken until I accidently spotted this warning had started to appear in the PBI Service refresh, so that is useful that the warning message now appears there. It would have been nice to know this was an issue the last time I edited the report, but heyho you can't have everything.

[GilbertQ]

Hi @UOLandrewdale 

What it could possibly be is sometimes there are changes that are happening to the Power BI service which could affect some of these schedule refreshes. But they typically fix them quite quickly, so I would wait for tomorrow to see if the issue resolves itself. Otherwise, if you also had to open up the PBIX as mentioned by @JLog and make sure when you refresh and you don't see any of the errors you're receiving from the Power BI service.

[JLog]

Thanks @GilbertQ , I refreshed in Service this morning and although the same warning persists, the visuals have now refreshed. How strange!

[UOLandrewdale]

it has been happening every day since 26 March 2026. I get zero errors or warnings when I refresh in the desktop client, I only see the message if I select the specific object and then select "Sort by column" and then reselect the sorting column.

[JLog]

I get the same "multiple distinct values" warning when refreshing a report in Service. The refresh hasn't failed in the traditional sense, yet the visuals *haven't* refreshed to display latest data. Strangely, when I open the source PBIX in desktop and refresh, I encounter zero errors and the visuals all refresh as expected.

[UOLandrewdale]

I also get zero errors or warnings when I refresh in the desktop client, I only see the message if I select the specific object and then select "Sort by column" and then reselect the sorting column.