Forum Discussion

ptmk25's avatar
ptmk25
Frequent Visitor
4 months ago

SharePoint Folder (Preview) Shortcut - undefined

Creating a SharePoint Folder (Preview) Shortcut, and pointing it to a folder ( no hyphens ) to a file of type *.xlsx it never gets to the Transform page as below ( from Youtube ). In the end, the fil...
data engineering
Lakehouse
nilendraFabric's avatar
nilendraFabric
Super User
4 months ago

Hi ptmk25 

 

I think this is a known limitation with SharePoint/OneDrive folder shortcuts in Fabric Lakehouses. The shortcut brings the .xlsx files into the lakehouse, but the engine can’t automatically parse them as tabular objects  so they land as “unidentified” instead of triggering the Transform-to-Delta flow.

 

Create the shortcut pointing directly to the individual .xlsx file rather than the parent folder. File-level shortcuts are more reliably recognized for transformation.
If you need multiple files, use a Dataflow Gen2 or a notebook (with pandas or openpyxl) to read the .xlsx files from the Files section and write them out as Delta tables. This gives you full control over schema and is the most reliable path.

ptmk25's avatar
ptmk25
Frequent Visitor
4 months ago

Thanks but in the youtube video -  same as what I am doing - you cannot select the file but the folder.
I keep one single file only in the folder, selected the folder, the shortcut transformation pops us

 

and disappears and the unidentified folder is created
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9ZZti6Gpv0 (2:25)

 

  • v-echaithra's avatar
    v-echaithra
    Community Support
    4 months ago

    Hi ptmk25 ,

    Thank you for sharing the detailed steps and screenshots.
    We were able to review the scenario, and based on the behavior you described (where the Transform wizard briefly appears and the file is then placed under Unidentified), this does not appear to be related to permissions or workspace configuration.

    Currently, when creating a shortcut at the folder level from SharePoint or OneDrive, Fabric may not consistently infer Excel (.xlsx) files as structured/tabular sources. In such cases, even if the Transform experience is momentarily triggered, the backend may not successfully classify the file. This results in the message: "Unable to identify these objects as tables or views..."
    As a result, the file is placed under Unidentified instead of proceeding through the Transform-to-Delta flow.

    Recommended approaches

    To reliably ingest and structure the data, we suggest the following options:

    1. Dataflow Gen2

    Connect to SharePoint or OneDrive
    Ingest the Excel file
    Load the data directly into a Lakehouse table
    This is currently the most stable and production-ready approach for this scenario.

    2. Notebook-based ingestion

    Access the file from the Lakehouse Files section
    Use libraries such as pandas or openpyxl to read the .xlsx file
    Write the output to a Delta table

    This approach provides full control over schema and transformations.

    Hope this helps.

    • ptmk25's avatar
      ptmk25
      Frequent Visitor
      4 months ago

      Hello v-echaithra, thanks for your reply and I appreciate the workaround and I understand the feature is in preview. The whole point, in our case, was to showcase this new functionality in lieu of the workarounds you listed. Is there no other way to make Fabric recognize the file as an excel? I am guessing this is a bug. 🙂