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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
7 years ago

Get data from website without opening url

Hi,

 

I've been working on a internal Power BI training SharePoint as an introduction to Power BI to new users when Power BI is rolled out across the office.

 

For this, data is taken from a Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_%28United_Nations%29).

 

However, when trying to load this data without first opening the url, the table and it's contents are not recognised. (See 1. in screenshot below)

 

After opening the url in Chrome, the data is seen but without a title(see 2.) When load is selected, you are prompted with an error along the lines of 'column 'Rank' could not be found'.

 

It is only after opening the url in Internet Explorer that the table and it's contents appears correctly and can be loaded. (see 3.)

(It still needs formated but this is part of the training tutorial)

 

I was hoping that this would be done without opening the url in IE first so that the tutorial is more straight forward to follow.

 

I was wondering if anyone would be able to give insight as to why I have needed to open the url in IE before this data will load correctly and any possible methods which are more straight forward, not requiring the url to be opened in IE first.

 

Thanks,

Calvin

 

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7 Replies

  • v-lili6-msft's avatar
    v-lili6-msft
    Community Support
    7 years ago

    hi, Anonymous

    I have test many times, Whether I open the url or not, It could be done without opening the url in IE first.

    Get data from website directly without opening url

    Please upgrade Powerbi DeskTop to the latest version and then try it again.

     

    Best Regards,

    Lin

     

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      Not applicable
      7 years ago

      v-lili6-msft LivioLanzo

       

      I updated Power BI to the October update to try Livio's suggestion and it seems to have solved the issue.

       

      It will now get the tables correctly without opening it in IE first, even after clearing cache and restarting.

       

      I will ask other people in the office to try this out and see if this is completely solved.

       

      Thanks to both of you,

      Calvin

      • Anonymous's avatar
        Anonymous
        Not applicable
        7 years ago

        Update on the update. 

         

        This worked for me yesterday and this morning but after trying it again for a third time today I recieved the same error as before when opening it in Chrome before IE. (Table titled document, gives "could not find column 'rank'" error)

         

        It seems that updating to the newest version has not solved the issue as I had hoped. :smileysad: