Advance your Data & AI career with 50 days of live learning, dataviz contests, hands-on challenges, study groups & certifications and more!
Get registeredGet Fabric Certified for FREE during Fabric Data Days. Don't miss your chance! Learn more
Hi PBI community!
I am trying to add a local excel file as a data source in my on premise gateway. I have successfully connected my SQL server but when i try to connect a local excel file I recieve this error:
Invalid connection credentials.
| Underlying error code: | -2147467259 |
| Underlying error message: | The credentials provided for the File source are invalid. |
From trying to figure this out from other posts, I do believe its due to my incorrect windows username and/or password. But I am not sure what to use for the username. When I set up my labtop it wouldnt let me use my work account, I ended up logging in using my personal account. Since then i have used my work account for everything. Power bi, excel etc. are all using my work account log in. So of course I have tried both usernames and passwords of my personal and work accounts on this labtop. Neither work as I get the error I posted above. I did read on some of the posts that you need a domian in the username? is this the case? and if so where would i find the domain? I apology as i know there were many posts like mine but even so I could not find a clear answer. What exactly is needed for the windows username? and where would I find it? if its not the username then what am I doing wrong? Any help is appreciated! Thanks in adance!
Solved! Go to Solution.
Hi @Macks ,
Please follow the following steps to navigate to the gateway data source setting page and check whether you have input the correct Windows user name and password in that page.
1. From the page header in the Power BI service, select Settings --> Manage gateways
2. Find the related excel data source and open the data source settings page
The windows account is that you sign in your computer. You can get the Windows user name by executing the CMD command below(whoami) to get it...
In addition, you can refer the following link to get your Windows user name...
9 Easy Ways to Find Your Windows Username
Best Regareds
Thank you so much! This really helped!
Hi @Macks ,
Please follow the following steps to navigate to the gateway data source setting page and check whether you have input the correct Windows user name and password in that page.
1. From the page header in the Power BI service, select Settings --> Manage gateways
2. Find the related excel data source and open the data source settings page
The windows account is that you sign in your computer. You can get the Windows user name by executing the CMD command below(whoami) to get it...
In addition, you can refer the following link to get your Windows user name...
9 Easy Ways to Find Your Windows Username
Best Regareds
Advance your Data & AI career with 50 days of live learning, contests, hands-on challenges, study groups & certifications and more!
Check out the October 2025 Power BI update to learn about new features.