Connecting to data source hosted on Dropbox

Sadly the previous poster is correct. your method works within excel and PowerQuery, but you cannot use that same query in PDI Desktop as fails on the gateway

That is really annoying.

Mike

Really? That is a pain!

Actually, I don't have a gateway in place on my local machine, so that could explain why it still works for me.

JAkerblom : How about you: Do you also don't have a gateway installed?

The code is fine to use within excel to query a dropbox folder. If you put that same query in PBI desktop and then publish to Power BI Service it fails.

I just spend hours getting it working in Excel, replaced everythnig in PBI and then had to reverse it all out!!!  Very frustrating.

Mike 

Yes, there are many things that don't work in the service unfortunately.

I'll check to see if anyone raised this to be voted on and if not add it.

I think this is the best one for us to vote on

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/6663925-dropbox

I already voted. Thanks for the link.

So far, the only way to make PBI Service work is loading single files using the code from user Masplin.

3rd comment on 3rd page of this same topic.

http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Integrations-with-Files-and/Connecting-to-data-source-hosted-on-Dropbox/td-p/67946/page/3

Ok so plan B. The out of the box method in power Query for querying a folder is create this big mess with sample files that is tremendusly confusing.  Is there a way to just have a single qury that does the job?

For example I want to query these 2 files in a dropbox folder. The first step I see this

However if i click the arrows on binary it sets off greating the sample file.

Can I get round this with some code similar to what Imke wrote for dropbox?  I assume it is a similar exercise but my M is too pooor to work it out :(

Mike

Found it :)

https://www.myexcelonline.com/blog/consolidate-multiple-excel-workbooks-using-power-query/

ImkeF, No I don't have a gateway installed. Didn't understand why I'd need one to make a specific API call. 

I see now that people need to specifically list folder contents and not just go for a specific file, which is what I did. First I thought it was the api method that couldn't provide that list results of folder contents, but when I tried to just do a command line curl call it worked just fine, i.e. the list_folder method can return the list of folder contents (but just not in PowerBI Desktop for some reason..). I tried all types of header parameters in the web.contents method to make it work, but I didn't succeed. Either I'm doing it wrong or it's just not possible. But it would be really strange if certain API calls just don't work.