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[Rodrigo33333]

Hello everyone, Im new in Fabric and I want to do some projects to known how it works. My firts try was with an excel file, but i have an error, the extension of the file is .xls, is that a problem?

[Rodrigo33333]

Thank you Shashi! My english is not the best but you got what i mean. 🖖🏾

[svenchio]

Hi @Rodrigo33333, I think your post as described leaves a a lot to the imagination, I mean, from "My firts try..." I wonder, your first try at doing what? extract the information from the excel file? moving the file from one place to another? I perhaps would like to go with the most common scenario, extracting the information from an .xls file, and again, move questions! Extracting the information using, a pipeline, a notebook? As you see, an .xls file IS NOT A PROBLEM unless you're trying to do something that is either not allowed or not supported...  this is why a better description can go a long way here  😁🤞 

For the time being, I'll go with the most common case, you want to add this .xls file into a Fabric lakehouse and then, using either a  Dataflow Gen2 or  Notebook you want to extract and read its content, in this context, "is an .xls a problem?" and then the answer is NO! as far back in time you go, the harder is to get older version to work, but is not impossible as shown below 

%pip install xlrd

import pandas as pd

# Path to your .xls file in OneLake
file_path = "/lakehouse/default/Files/myfile.xls"

# Read the old Excel file
df = pd.read_excel(file_path, engine="xlrd")
display(df)

Nonehtless, if possible, convert .xls to .xlsx  before ingestion, this avoids compatibility issues and improves performance 😉🤞  and for large-scale ingestion, converting to .csv or .xlsx is best practice. 

Hope this brief explanation help you, and please, keep your questions comming, I'll suggest a more detials description of your environment to get more precises help from the community ... hey, if this has been of help, a kudos would be nice  ☺️and/or mark this as a solution, all the best 

[OnurOz]

alternatively, you can save it as a CSV file, if you don't have the Excel (2007+).

[shashiPaul1570_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Rodrigo33333,

Yes — the issue is because your file is .xls, which is the very old Excel format (Excel 97–2003).
Microsoft Fabric and most modern connectors do not support .xls files.

Open the file in Excel → Save As → Excel Workbook (.xlsx).
Then upload the .xlsx file into Fabric or OneLake — it will work without issues.

Why this is required?

Fabric uses the newer OpenXML standard, and older .xls files aren’t compatible with the ingestion engine.

If this helps, please consider giving a kudos 👍 and marking it as the solution ✅ so it helps others too.

Thanks & Regards
Shashi Paul