Problem summary
Historical GA4 user-level or demographic data can be unavailable even when more recent data is present.
Error message or symptoms
User-level data is unavailable for dates more than 2 or 14 months ago.
Age, gender or interest data is unavailable for dates more than two months ago.
A backfill cannot retrieve the missing dates.
When does this occur
The request includes user-level data.
The requested dates are outside the GA4 property retention period.
The request includes age, gender or interest data older than two months.
Root cause
The GA4 property retention setting limits user-level data to 2 or 14 months. GA4 always applies a two-month retention period to age, gender and interest data. The setting does not affect standard aggregated reports. After GA4 removes affected user-level or demographic data, Funnel cannot retrieve it.
Solution
In GA4, go to Admin > Data settings > Data retention.
Confirm whether the requested fields contain user-level, age, gender or interest data.
Limit the request to dates within the applicable retention period.
If the property supports a 14-month period, select 14 months, and click Save. This change can preserve eligible data that GA4 has not deleted.
You cannot recover data that GA4 has already removed.
For details, see Google's data retention documentation.