BI Desktop Times Out When Trying To Import Excel File

[Anonymous]

I'm using BI Desktop and trying to import an Excel file into an existing BI report. The Excel file is not password protected and is in the same folder as the .pbix file. The report has a mix of direct queries to a Sharepoint list and other Excel files which were incorporated without any problems in the past. However, when trying to import this new Excel file using Get Data > File, BI displays the following message:

Connnecting: Please wait while we establish a connection to [file name]

It displays this message for about 20 minutes then finally says it cannot establish a connection to the file. I can import this same Excel file into a new BI desktop report and other existing report without any problems. Any ideas as to what the issue is?

[v-jingzhang · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous 

Clear permissions in Data source settings of the old .pbix file and try again. If it still fails, you can import this Excel file into a new desktop report first. Then go to Power Query Editor, right click on this query and select copy. Go back to the old report and open Power Query Editor, paste it in Queries pane. In this way, you can copy a query from one report to other reports. Finally apply the changes to Power BI Desktop. 

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Jing
If this post helps, please Accept it as Solution to help other members find it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Jing. Clearing the Data Source permissions did not work. However, copying the query from a new temporary report to the old one did work. In this case, the copy/paste procedure was the solution. 

[v-jingzhang]

Thank you for the feedback😀