Authentication issues

[powerbidev123]

I've been dealing with an issue in one of my Power BI reports for the past few weeks, and I'm running out of ideas.

The report is very large, with numerous queries and fairly complex transformations, so making changes and testing them takes several hours each time. I'm currently trying to publish a small fix to one of the queries because the source data format has changed.

However, when I apply the changes, I receive the following error:

"We couldn't authenticate with the credentials provided."

The error occurs when connecting to one of our organization's SharePoint sites. The queries connect to SharePoint like this:

Source = SharePoint.Files("https://company.sharepoint.com/teams/myteam", [ApiVersion = 15]),
#"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(Source, each ([Folder Path] = "https://company.sharepoint.com/teams/myteam/Shared Documents/the/desired/folder/")),

Troubleshooting I've already tried

• Changed Power BI Desktop > Security to use my default browser for authentication. The authentication window hangs for a while, disappears (making it seem like authentication succeeded), but then reappears with the same error.

• Applied SharePoint permissions at the team site level instead of the root site. The issue persists.

• Cleared all global data source permissions. After doing this, the authentication window hangs while attempting to sign in using my credentials, which seems unusual.

• Downloaded a fresh copy of the PBIX and repeated the change (switching from Remove Columns to Select Columns) to rule out the transformation itself. The same authentication error occurs.

What's confusing is that nothing in the environment has changed, at least as far as I'm aware. This report was working previously, and I'm not aware of any changes to my account, SharePoint permissions, or the report itself that would explain why authentication is now failing.

Has anyone experienced something similar or have any suggestions on what else I can check? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[krishnakanth240]

Hi @powerbidev123 

Can you try these 

1.In Power BI Desktop, File - Options - Data source settings, delete SharePoint entry not just global permissions, also clear cached credentials in Windows Credential Manager for SharePoint entries since PBI Desktop can hold tokens outside in-app permissions 

2.Check whether your org provides conditional access. MFA, device compliance, session timeout on SharePoint is policy change which is  most common cause. Ask your admin if anything changed recently for MFA policy 

3.Try authenticating from different browser since a corrupted browser auth cache for login.microsoftonline.com is a frequent cause

[Kagiyama_yutaka]

The safe step is clearing both the tenant‑root and site‑URL SharePoint credentials in Power BI Desktop and signing in again, and checking the same URL once in a blank PBIX to be sure the creds are clean. Desktop uses the cached tenant‑root OAuth first, so resetting both entries is what stops this sudden auth failure.

[rohit1991 · Accepted solution]

Hii @powerbidev123 

The transformation change is not causing this because authentication fails before the query runs. Test the site in a blank PBIX using Get Data > SharePoint Folder, enter only the site URL, and select Organizational account. Clear credential entries for both the SharePoint tenant URL and site URL, then sign out, restart Desktop, and reconnect. If the blank test also fails, ask your Entra administrator to review the sign-in logs and Conditional Access policies; if it works, replace the SharePoint source step in the original report.