I've created a document with around 50 Art Boards.
I've added a Data Set which is just updating ONE art board.
My questions is, can I get the Data Set to work across ALL the art boards.
OR - can I Export all the variations of the data set from ONE art board.
If you are looking to do multiple business cards you are actually better off using InDesign's data merge. I would only recommend using Illustrator's variables if you need to make variable graphs.
Indesign's data merge is much more intuitive and user-friendly:
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/data-merge.html
You only need to create the initial design and then link the column (headers) from your csv file to the appropriate design element in your InDesign document.
The literal answer to your question is to bind the variables to each of the artboards' art content, creating as many different variables as you have artboards for every dynamic text or image, etc. However, best solution in your case would be to use the Transform Effect to create a step/repeat grid of the one top-left artboard. This way Illustrator does less work and would take less time to process.
