Hello PowerBI-Ites, Has anyone had any luck connecting to Dropbox as a data source. Couldn't find many articles on this topic. Here's one article that had a solution we couldn't get to work: http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Data-source-hosted-on-Dropbox/td-p/47882.Just wondering if anyone could shed some light on this topic. Thank you!

This is not true!!!! I have successful connected my desktop model to an anonnymous dropbox link and it refreshes absolutely fine on PBI servce. OneDrive is an absolute disaster as a cloud storage system, it works for Power bI but is garbagge for anything else. The issue I have is where my query is doing a folder query so I need ot try Imke solution For example I have this file Inputs.xlsx which sits in Dropbox\DataModels\SourceFiles. firstly create a blank query to set the path to the file DropboxSourcePath is letSource = "https://api-content.dropbox.com/1/files/auto/DataModel/SourceFiles/"inSource Secondly go onto dropbox online and into developer section as Imke described ot create an app and get a token. In my case I have tried her folder app so I just got a token for the whole of dropbox. Token is letSource = "?access_token=lkPfa4vOd-AAAAAAAAAAKjmGh93HWPeYFfffdfffdfdggf-CY0LSTVss5JF53HOGK46xxkWsQzhj-"inSource Then your query becomes. Note now web.contents instead of file.contents and if you have any path its "/" not "\" letSource = Excel.Workbook(Web.Contents(DropboxSourcePath & "Inputs.xlsx" & Token), null, true),Seasonality_Table = Source{[Item="Seasonality",Kind="Table"]}[Data],#"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Seasonality_Table,{{"Month No", Int64.Type}, {"Month", type text}, {"Car Count Seasonality", type number}, {"GTV Seasonality", type number}})in#"Changed Type" So I can refresh all conenctions on desktop and when I publish to PBI Service I see under credential web for each of these dropbox links. Edit conenction and chose annonymous. Mike

Thanks to you I am finally able to call data from Dropbox. I built upon your list_folder API call , added a download call after it: - Actual data table would be: let header = [ #"Authorization"="Bearer "&token, #"Content-Type"="application/json"], data = [ path="", recursive=true, include_media_info=false, include_deleted=false, include_has_explicit_shared_members=false], response = Web.Contents("https://api.dropboxapi.com/2/files/list_folder",[Content=Json.FromValue(data),Headers=header]), out = Json.Document(response,1252), entries = out[entries], #"Converted to Table" = Table.FromList(entries, Splitter.SplitByNothing(), null, null, ExtraValues.Error), #"Expanded Column1" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Converted to Table", "Column1", {".tag", "name", "path_lower", "path_display", "id", "client_modified", "server_modified", "rev", "size", "content_hash"}, {".tag", "name", "path_lower", "path_display", "id", "client_modified", "server_modified", "rev", "size", "content_hash"}), #"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Expanded Column1", each ([#".tag"] = "file")), #"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(#"Filtered Rows", "file", each fGetTable([path_display])), #"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Added Custom",{".tag", "name", "path_lower", "path_display", "id", "client_modified", "server_modified", "rev", "size", "content_hash"}), #"Expanded data" = Table.ExpandTableColumn(#"Removed Columns", "file", {"COLUMN1 HERE", "COLUMN2 HERE"}, {"COLUMN1 HERE", "COLUMN2 HERE"})in #"Expanded data" - keep in mind you have to type your expanded columns manually, user interface expanding does not seem to work with this method...- "token" (line 2) is a defined parameter with the actual generated access token for the Dropbox application, you could type it between quotes as text right there instead. - fGetTable function, which is the actual download query (referenced in line 15) would be: let GetFile=(file) => let header = [ #"Authorization"="Bearer "&token, #"Dropbox-API-Arg"="{"&""""&"path"&""""&":"&""""&file&""""&"}"], out = Web.Contents("https://content.dropboxapi.com/2/files/download",[Headers=header]), excel = Excel.Workbook(out, null, true), table = excel{0}[Data], #"Promoted Headers" = Table.PromoteHeaders(table, [PromoteAllScalars=true]) in #"Promoted Headers" in GetFile The "Dropbox-API-Arg" was escaping-quotes hell...Edit: double quotes is one escaped quote inside a string... didn't need so much escape and concatenate, just changed that line to: #"Dropbox-API-Arg"="{""path"":"""&file&"""}"],

I have created a DropBox data connector using the Power Query Extensions SDK. You are welcome to try it or check the code for a possible answerhttps://github.com/Hugoberry/PowerQueryConnectors/blob/master/src/DropBox/DropBox.pq

Hi guys,thanks for these helpful different solutions! I've picked up some code bits from this thread and created a function that makes it pretty easy to grab files from a dropbox-folder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEVRO-Zc7pg This should be helpful for folks who are not so tech-savy and might stumble across this post.

Folder need to start with a slash: see here: http://www.thebiccountant.com/2017/06/25/import-multiple-files-dropbox-folder-powerbi-excel-via-powerquery-at-once/

Connecting to data source hosted on Dropbox | Microsoft Fabric Community

58 Replies

Greg_Deckler
Community Champion
9 years ago
When you said that it didn't work, what kind of error/issue were you seeing?
ankitpatira
Community Champion
9 years ago
JohnSwid You need to register for Dropbox developer account and generate access token. Then use URL provided as below to connect. FILE PATH is folder/filename.extension. When you register app for access token choose full permission and it should work.

https://api-content.dropbox.com/1/files/[FILE PATH]?access_token=[ACCESS TOKEN]

https://api-content.dropbox.com/1/files/abc/myfile.txt?access_token=12345 where abc is folder, myfile is file and 12345 is access token.
Anonymous
Not applicable
9 years ago
Hi JohnSwid,

Which file or data source do you store in Dropbox? I am trying to connect to a Excel file stored in DropBox following ankitpatira’s suggestions and everything works well.

Moreover, some ideas about that connecting to data source stored in Dropbox have been submitted in the following links, please vote them. Some changes may be made for the connection to Dropbox and it could be easier for us to connect to Dropbox from Desktop in the future.

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/6663925-dropbox
https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/9045649-please-add-more-data-services

In addition, you can also consider to store files in OneDrive instead of Dropbox and connect to them from Power BI Desktop.

Thanks,
Lydia Zhang
- mike_honey
  Memorable Member
  9 years ago
  While researching this topic, I noticed that all the examples given appear to be for the Dropbox v1 API, which has been deprecated and will be turned off in a few months (June 2017):
  
  https://blogs.dropbox.com/developers/2016/06/api-v1-deprecated/
  
  The v2 API looks much more complex - there doesnt appear to be any direct equivalent for the method suggested above (single HTTPS call with an API Key). The authentication requirements now seem more complex:
  
  https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/auth-types#user
  
  It's stumped me for now - has anyone got this working?
  - elliotdixon
    Responsive Resident
    9 years ago
    I agree with mike_honey - cant seem to get it working.
    Any tips on connecting into the dropbox files would be great.

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Connecting to data source hosted on Dropbox

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