Connect Power BI to an Azure Storage Container that is shared with me as an External User

[asarraf21]

Hi,

An Azure Blob Container has been shared with me as an external user. The administrator has assigned the STORAGE BLOB DATA OWNER role to me. 

When I login through my Azure Portal, I can see that the container is shared with me, although I cannot seem to view any data.

Also, when I try to connect to the Blob storage from Power BI Desktop, it seems that the only available authentication option is by entering Access Key, which I don't have.

I wonder if I am not doing something right here. Any help will be appreciated.

[v-cherch-msft]

Hi @asarraf21 

It seems you want is in Power BI for accessing Azure Table Storage with Shared Access Signatures - these can be generated via the Azure Storage APIs to limit access to certain tables (or collections/blobs in the case of Blob Storage) for a certain period of time.For further,please have a look at below article.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/chmitch/2018/05/31/connecting-to-blob-storage-with-a-shared-access-...

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[sunilvarma02]

Hi, I am trying to access PDF files from Power BI, which are stored in the Azure Storage Container. This container is set to private, i.e., it cannot be access through internet. We are trying to access this Container's PDF files using Storage Access Keys (SAS). But i am not sure, how this can be achieved from Power BI. please let me know how this can be implemented.

[lars_k]

Hi @sunilvarma02 - I was trying to do the same thing in a streamlined way. This guide will help you list the blobs in a container using a SAS and then download the contents of each blob:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/chmitch/connecting-to-blob-storage-with-a-shared-acce...

[asarraf21 · Accepted solution]

From what I gathered, connecting to a blob datasource only works with access keys. However, I managed to connect to the shared container using Web.Contents and it worked just fine.