SSRS Dataset Field Refresh not updating for Tablix

Question

I have updated the SP for the attached dataset that the tablix is using. The refresh worked fine and I can see my new fields in the shared data set when I look in the Fields tab. My problem is the tablix itself is not giving me access to the new fields. There is a disconnect somewhere and I cannot figure out hot to get the tablix to see the updated fields available in the dataset. I run into this problem frequently and hope I can get a good answer here to return to in the future as I am sure I will need to. I have googled and looked through the suggested questions here and I cannot find one that is directly related to this issue.

I will also know note that the report project is in TFS source control as I read that has some adverse side affects. I have marked the whole project for edit and also went to the folder structure and made sure everything was unset to read only.

I am using SSRS 2008 in VS 2010.

Cheiro

For anyone facing this in the future, you need to go into the query editor for the dataset and execute it once to bring in new fields. More details here: inkeysolutions.com/blogs/… – Nautical

Answer 1

Just found it... I don't understand the need for hidden menus like this..

Click the report itself, then go up to View on the menu and at the very bottom there is "Report Data". From here you can select your dataset and go to its properties and refresh the reports attached dataset's fields. What a pain in the butt.

Here is a link that helps better explain it. http://blog.dontpaniclabs.com/post/2012/01/26/Developings-Reports-for-SQL-Server-Reporting-Services

Cheiro

Refreshing the fields didn't work for me, for some reason it still didn't give me the ability to add them via the UI – Entertainment

Ctrl + Alt + D to open Report Data in VS2015 while you have a .rdl file opened. – Fagot

"Click the report itself, then go up to View on the menu and at the very bottom there is "Report Data". From here you can select your dataset and go to its properties and refresh the reports attached dataset's fields. What a pain in the butt."This is literally the most annoying setting in the world. I spent literally 20 minutes trying to find this. Thank you. – Actable

Answer 2

You can also delete the .data file if you still can't get it to refresh.

1. Go into the file folder where the .rdl file exists
2. Next to it, there should be a file with the same name with the .rdl.data extensions. Delete this file.

It appears to force the refresh probably because it has to recreate the file.

Here's a less invasive way but may not always work:

1. In the Report Data windown, right click on you dataset and click Dataset Properties like so:

1. Click Refresh Fields near the bottom right of the Dataset Properties window:

Fallacy

You are right, it does not always work (refreshing the fields), but for those of us who are programmers and don't mind "invasive" ways, deleting the .rdl.data file was a for sure winner. Thanks for that. – Labourer

I wasted several hours on this until i read this post. I was doing the "Refresh Fields" which was not refreshing the data. Deleting the .rdl.data file did the job. @Cheiro thank you. – Arlo

Answer 3

After changing the Stored Procedure code, without changing the name and number of fields returned, I could only get the report to seemingly call the new format of the stored procedure by clicking the Refresh button in the report's Preview tab.

Hinterland

Answer 4

Go into your solution folder, where the rdl's are stored and delete .rdl.data file for your report. Next time you'll run the report, new rdl.data file will be created and it will have all the new fields from the updated SP.

Sena

Answer 5

ok, this maybe an older thread, but I kept running into the same problem on occasion. The absolutely easiest way to fix this is adding the following line of code to the beginning of the stored procedure that produces your dataset for the report:

SET FMTONLY OFF;

Happy coding :)

Damali

Answer 6

I ran into a very similar issue:

• Added a new field to an existing SQL table function
• (With some difficulty) added the new field to the existing dataset in SSRS
• Spent some time unsuccessfully trying to add the new fields to the table (tablix?) in design mode.

This didn't work for me so eventually I opened the particular report file [filename].rdl in a text editor and surprise surprise it was XML. It was easy enough to add the missing field manually, and visual studio then prompted me to refresh the report.

 <DataSets>
  <DataSet Name="DataSet1">
   ...
   <Fields>
    <!-- add new field at this level -->
    <Field Name="[newfield]">
      <DataField>Email</DataField>
      <rd:TypeName>System.String</rd:TypeName>
    </Field>
   </Fields>
  </DataSet>
 </DataSets>

Entertainment

It is sad that we even have to do something like this :( – Cheiro

Answer 7

I am having exact same issue in VS 2012. The stored procedure used as a query will not allow to refresh fields. When the button is pressed nothing happens.

The only solution I found is to flip the Query Type to Text and provide the parameter values on the exec call to the SP.

Why do we have to put up with these obvious show stopper bugs?

Rehearsal

Answer 8

Had the same issue and I was able to resolve it by renaming my dataset in properties, creating a new dataset with the original name, and then hitting the refresh button.

Prendergast

Answer 9

Old thread, but I ran into this using VS 2015 and SSMS 2016. I was certain it was an issue with VS. When I went back to SSMS and tried executing my stored procedure, however, I found that passing certain parameter values would cause the query to fail. Interestingly, I was able to ALTER the stored procedure without encountering any errors. (Perhaps because some combinations of parameters wouldn't result in a failure?)

Anyways, at the end of the day it was faulty coding in my sproc that was causing the fields in SSRS not to refresh. When I went back and corrected the issues with my code, everything worked as expected in VS.

Foolscap

Answer 10

I am working in Visual Studio 2015 and none of the above answers worked for me. If you are getting the data from a stored procedure, you need to open the .xsd file and right click on the data model. Select Configure, and the correct values from the procedure should appear on the right of the window. Then refresh your dataset from the Report Data tab.

Adagio

Answer 11

I had the same issue. I installed SP1 so that .rdl.data file would get generated which inturn also fixed the data refresh issue.

Reference: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/sqlserver/en-US/e2b199df-bc1b-4211-9110-85a0c63454b8/why-does-ssrs-not-create-a-rdldata-file-when-previewing-a-report?forum=sqlreportingservices

Inexperienced

Answer 12

I was trying to use an ODBC driver for the datasource that connected ok, but wouldn't show Fields in VS 2015 SSRS report. I went back and used a datasource based on SQL Server driver (it's in the choices when designing a datasource) and it worked perfectly.

Quest

Answer 13

I had this same issue but the cause was different from the other answers at the time of this writing.

In my case, the stored procedure used as the data source was returning multiple data sets (due to some debugging code that I had left in there).

SSRS was "seeing" the fields in the first dataset, whereas I was expecting it to see the fields in the second dataset.

Removing the extraneous datasets fixed the issue and SSRS was able to see the fields that I intended.

Deformation

Answer 14

Clearing reportviewer's datasources works for me.

this.(reportviewername).LocalReport.DataSources.Clear();

Leaflet

Answer 15

1. Open the Visual Studio 2008 reports solution
2. Open (double click) your report (.rpt file) on left pane
3. Press Ctrl + Alt + D to open the Report Data panel
4. Expand the DataSets folder
5. Find the report's main data set and right click the "DataSet Properties" menu
6. Click the "Refresh Fields" button on the popup window.

Ranice

Answer 16

Deleting .data no work for me. Deleting Dataset and adding again worked. And I had previously configured VS/SSRS to NOT cache.

Burnoose

Answer 17

refresh and deleting .data did not work for me. So I just manually added the fields.

Chanachance

Answer 18

After I changed the stored procedure behind DataSet1, nothing was working to update the fields list.

1. Added a new dataset (DataSet2) with the updated stored procedure
2. Changed the Table1 tablix DataSetName to DataSet2
3. Deleted the old Dataset1
4. Changed the columns to the new field names.

Lived happily ever after.

This is in Visual Studio 2019 v16.11.26. SQL Server Reporting services v15.0.19528.0

Orphrey

Answer 19

As mentioned above returning more than one dataset or having duplicate column names in the return set can cause this issue. I spent hours this morning figuring this mornings refresh issue out. It's similar to returning more than one dataset. It was my debug code. Even though I'm not returning more than one dataset if my debug parameter is set to 1 or 2 in testing it returns something like 100 rows of the last temp table it populated. Even though the report passes 0 for debug, those debug statements are what is causing to report not to refresh.

Cambogia