How to Stop Scheduled Refresh in Power BI

Need to turn off a scheduled refresh in Power BI but feeling a bit lost in the settings? You're in the right place. Stopping a data refresh is a common task, whether you're trying to save resources, prevent errors on a temporarily offline data source, or just retiring an old dataset. This guide will walk you through exactly how to disable or pause those automated updates, step-by-step.

Graphed

Build AI Agents for Marketing

Build virtual employees that run your go to market. Connect your data sources, deploy autonomous agents, and grow your company.

Build Your First Agent

Why Would You Need to Stop a Scheduled Refresh?

Before jumping into the "how," let's cover the "why." You might think a scheduled refresh is something you set once and forget, but there are several practical reasons why you'd want to hit the pause button.

• The Dataset is Obsolete: You've built a shinier, more efficient V2 of your report. The old one is no longer needed, and letting it continue to refresh in the background just wastes resources and clutters your workspace. Turning off the refresh is the first step before deleting it entirely.
• The Underlying Data Source is Unavailable: Your IT team might be migrating a database, the API you’re connected to might be down for maintenance, or network issues are preventing a connection. Failed refreshes generate error notifications and can consume valuable processing capacity. Pausing the schedule prevents this flood of "refresh failed" emails until the source is back online.
• Reducing Capacity Load: If your organization uses Power BI Premium or Fabric capacities, competing dataset refreshes can slow things down. If you notice performance dips or important reports are slow to refresh, you can temporarily pause less critical datasets to free up memory and CPU for the important ones.
• Making Major Changes to Your Data Model: When you're working on significant changes to a data model in Power BI Desktop (like adding new tables, changing relationships, or rewriting DAX measures), you don’t want the published version in the Power BI Service to keep refreshing. Doing so can cause inconsistencies or failures. The best practice is to pause the online refresh, complete your changes, republish the .PBIX file, and then re-enable the refresh.

Method 1: A Complete Guide to Disabling a Scheduled Refresh

The most direct way to stop a refresh is to flip the main switch off entirely. This tells Power BI to forget the schedule and stop all future refresh attempts. It's the best option when a dataset is being permanently retired or you need to stop it indefinitely. Here's exactly what to do.

AI Agents for Marketing

Crash Course

Graphed

Free PDF · the crash course

AI Agents for Marketing Crash Course

Learn how to deploy AI marketing agents across your go-to-market — the best tools, prompts, and workflows to turn your data into autonomous execution without writing code.

Download the PDF

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Navigate to Your Power BI Workspace First, log into the Power BI Service by going to app.powerbi.com. Once you're in, navigate to the correct workspace from the left-hand navigation pane. This is the workspace where you originally published your dataset and report.
2. Find Your Dataset Inside the workspace, you’ll see a list of all your reports, dashboards, and datasets. They all have unique icons. You are looking for the dataset, which usually has an icon that looks like a small orange cylinder. Don't confuse it with the report, which shares the same name but has a blue bar chart icon.
3. Access the Dataset Settings Hover your mouse over the dataset's name. A few icons will appear. Click the three vertical dots (the "More options" menu) and then select Settings from the dropdown list.
4. Locate the 'Scheduled Refresh' Section On the "Settings" page for your dataset, you'll see a variety of configuration options. Scroll down until you find the section labeled Scheduled refresh and click the small arrow to expand it if it's not already open.
5. Turn Off the Refresh Toggle Inside this section, you'll see the schedule that was previously set up. At the very top, there’s a primary toggle switch under the heading, "Keep your data up to date." This is the master switch. To completely disable the schedule, click this toggle switch to move it into the Off position.
6. Click Apply After you flip the toggle, don't forget the final step. Scroll to the bottom and click the Apply button. If you navigate away without clicking Apply, your changes won’t be saved, and the refresh will continue to run as scheduled.

That’s it! The scheduled refresh is now fully disabled. Power BI will no longer attempt to update this dataset on a schedule unless you manually go back into these settings and re-enable it.

Method 2: Temporarily Pausing Refreshes Without Losing Your Schedule

What if you don't want to completely disable the schedule? Maybe you just need to pause updates for a day or two while a source system is being worked on, but you don't want to lose all the specific time slots you configured. In this case, instead of toggling the master switch off, you can simply remove the scheduled times.

This approach gives you a bit more flexibility. Follow the same first four steps from Method 1 to navigate to the Scheduled refresh settings pane. Once you're there:

1. Remove Scheduled Times Instead of touching the master "Keep your data up to date" toggle, look below at the individual times you've added under the "Time" section. For each time slot listed, there is a small 'x' icon you can click to delete that specific refresh time.
2. Delete All Scheduled Times Click the 'x' for every time slot you have configured until none are left. The refresh frequency options will disappear.
3. Save Changes Click Apply to save your changes.

By using this method, the scheduled refresh remains "On," but with no times scheduled, Power BI has nothing to run. When you're ready to resume automatic updates, simply add your time slots back in without changing other settings. It's a clean way to pause temporarily.

Graphed

Build AI Agents for Marketing

Build virtual employees that run your go to market. Connect your data sources, deploy autonomous agents, and grow your company.

Build Your First Agent

For Power Automate and API Users: Stopping Refreshes Programmatically

For more advanced users managing dozens of datasets or integrating refresh management into automated workflows, you can stop refreshes using the Power BI REST API. This is useful for enterprise scenarios where a central IT team needs to pause all refreshes for a specific data source during maintenance.

You can use the Datasets - Update Refresh Schedule API call to modify the schedule. To disable the refresh, make an API request to that dataset's endpoint with a body setting the refresh schedule to 'disabled'.

This can be automated through Power Automate flows. For example, create a SharePoint list for dataset refresh requests. When a new item is added, a flow triggers, makes the API call to disable the refresh, and sends a confirmation email. This provides self-service controls without granting all users admin permissions.

Common Questions and Quick Fixes

Even straightforward processes can have hiccups. Here are some common issues:

Why is my scheduled refresh toggle greyed out and unclickable?

This usually relates to credentials or gateway issues. Power BI won't allow enabling a schedule if it can't connect to the data source. Check in dataset settings:

• Gateway and cloud connections: Ensure a data gateway is configured and running if connecting to on-prem sources.
• Data source credentials: Re-enter credentials if they have expired or are incorrect by clicking "Edit credentials."

Once these show green, the toggle should become active.

AI Agents for Marketing

Crash Course

Graphed

Free PDF · the crash course

AI Agents for Marketing Crash Course

Learn how to deploy AI marketing agents across your go-to-market — the best tools, prompts, and workflows to turn your data into autonomous execution without writing code.

Download the PDF

I stopped the refresh, but I still got a failure notification. What happened?

Likely, a refresh was already in progress when you disabled the schedule. That refresh will finish or fail, but no new scheduled attempts will occur afterward. No further notifications should come once all in-progress refreshes complete.

Does stopping the scheduled refresh prevent manual refreshes?

No. Disabling the schedule only affects automated updates. You can still refresh manually by clicking "Refresh now" in the dataset options. This allows on-demand updates irrespective of the schedule status.

Final Thoughts

Stopping a Power BI scheduled refresh is simple but vital for managing your BI environment. Whether you disable it completely or just pause temporarily by removing scheduled times, you have control from the dataset settings menu.

Power BI is powerful for analysis, but managing connection and refresh logic can be complex. At Graphed, we simplified this by building a platform where data sources connect once. Your dashboards then update in real-time, removing the need to manage refresh schedules manually. Focus on insights, not data updates.