Forum Discussion

gusdahu's avatar
gusdahu
Helper IV
7 years ago
Solved

What does this error mean?

Power BI Community,

 

I am attempting to link Power BI to a folder within my hard drive. The folder contains three identical excel workbooks. Each workbook represents a different month, otherwise the columns and everything else about the workbooks are the same. I get the following error message each time I attempt to link the folder:

 

Why am I receiving this error message? How may I correct this error?

 

Regards,

Gus Dahu

  • Confirm that the files have identical content you are importing. The tables linked to must be the same name, and they must have the exact same column names.

     

    Otherwise you will have to import them separately using the Excel file feature vs the folder feature, and then clean them up in Power Query to get them to be identical, then append to one big table.

3 Replies

  • You may want to check if your Excel file by coincidence are binary files (xlsb). That can cause this error too. If so, just safe them as .xls or .xlsx

  • edhans's avatar
    edhans
    Community Champion

    Confirm that the files have identical content you are importing. The tables linked to must be the same name, and they must have the exact same column names.

     

    Otherwise you will have to import them separately using the Excel file feature vs the folder feature, and then clean them up in Power Query to get them to be identical, then append to one big table.

  • v-jiascu-msft's avatar
    v-jiascu-msft
    Microsoft Employee

    Hi Gus,

     

    Which step exactly did you do when you got this error message? I tested randomly. Though I didn't get the expected result, no errors showed up. Can you also share a dummy sample?

     

     

    Best Regards,
    Dale