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PaisleyPrince's avatar
PaisleyPrince
Advocate II
2 months ago
Solved

Problem loading an excel file in Sharepoint

I'm trying to connect to an excel file in Sharepoint but getting the error "web.contents failed to get content from "....." $value (404): Not Found". I have removed the suffix "?web=1" from the filename and can load other excel files however i'm unclear why this one is causing a problem. Any help would be much appreciated.

thanks

Scott 

Need Help
  • pcoley's avatar
    pcoley
    2 months ago

    Since other Excel files work, the issue is likely specific to this file rather than your authentication or SharePoint connection.

     

    Verify the file actually exists at the URL Power Query is requesting.

     

    When Power Query accesses an Excel file through SharePoint, it often converts the URL into a REST API call ending with something similar to:

     

     
    .../_api/web/GetFileByServerRelativeUrl('...')
    /$value

    A 404 means SharePoint cannot find the file at the path Power Query is using.

    Common causes:

    • File was renamed
    • File was moved to another folder
    • Folder names contain special characters
    • URL encoding issues (%20, #, &, etc.)

     

    I've seen files fail when the name contains:

    #
    %
    &
    +
    '

    or multiple periods such as:

    Sales.Report.2026.xlsx

    Try renaming the file temporarily to something simple:

    SalesReport.xlsx

    and test again.

     

     

4 Replies

  • pcoley's avatar
    pcoley
    Super User
    2 months ago

    Since other Excel files work, the issue is likely specific to this file rather than your authentication or SharePoint connection.

     

    Verify the file actually exists at the URL Power Query is requesting.

     

    When Power Query accesses an Excel file through SharePoint, it often converts the URL into a REST API call ending with something similar to:

     

     
    .../_api/web/GetFileByServerRelativeUrl('...')
    /$value

    A 404 means SharePoint cannot find the file at the path Power Query is using.

    Common causes:

    • File was renamed
    • File was moved to another folder
    • Folder names contain special characters
    • URL encoding issues (%20, #, &, etc.)

     

    I've seen files fail when the name contains:

    #
    %
    &
    +
    '

    or multiple periods such as:

    Sales.Report.2026.xlsx

    Try renaming the file temporarily to something simple:

    SalesReport.xlsx

    and test again.

     

     

  • v-achippa's avatar
    v-achippa
    Community Support
    2 months ago

    Hi PaisleyPrince,

     

    Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community.

     

    Thank you parry2k and pcoley for the prompt response.

     

    As we haven’t heard back from you, we wanted to kindly follow up to check if the solution provided by the user's for the issue worked? or let us know if you need any further assistance.

     

    Thanks and regards,

    Anjan Kumar Chippa

    • v-achippa's avatar
      v-achippa
      Community Support
      2 months ago

      Hi @PaisleyPrince,

       

      We wanted to kindly follow up to check if the solution provided by the user's for the issue worked? or let us know if you need any further assistance.

       

      Thanks and regards,

      Anjan Kumar Chippa