Forum Discussion
sharepoint folder - missing column names
Anonymous Hi! Yes, this is expected behavior in Power Query when combining files with SharePoint Folder or other folder-based connectors. Here’s why it happens and what you can do about it.
When using SharePoint Folder to combine multiple files, Power Query tries to align columns based on headers. If one file has an unnamed (empty) column header and another file has a named header (e.g., "Serial number"), Power Query treats them as different columns.
If a file has an unnamed column, Power Query may not recognize it properly during automatic column mapping, leading to null values.
If another file has a named column in the same position, Power Query keeps that name and only combines matching headers.
Since File1 has an unnamed header, Power Query still picks up the data. But for File2, it ignores the unnamed column because there's no corresponding match.Solution:
- Load the data without automatically promoting headers (disable "Use First Row as Headers" in the Source step).
- Manually promote the first row as headers later in the transformation process.
- Replace empty column names dynamically using a custom transformation step.
If it's ok, please accept my answer as solution!
BBF
Hi Anonymous,
Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.
It looks like you have two Excel files stored in SharePoint that contain data with the same structure (same columns) but different rows. Some columns in both files have headers (Serial Number), while others have empty headers (unnamed columns). You are facing unexpected behaviour where in file1 PQ correctly displays data from both the "Serial Number" column and the empty header column and in file2 PQ displays data correctly for the "Serial Number" column, but the empty header column shows null values instead of actual data. However, when you rename the empty headers (e.g., name them "Price"), then everything works as expected, and the null values are replaced by actual numbers.
As BeaBF already responded to your query, please go through his response and accept it as solution if it answers your query.
I would also take a moment to thank BeaBF, for actively participating in the community forum and for the solutions you’ve been sharing in the community forum. Your contributions make a real difference.
If I misunderstand your needs or you still have problems on it, please feel free to let us know.
Best Regards,
Hammad.
Community Support Team
If this post helps then please mark it as a solution, so that other members find it more quickly.
Thank you.