Forum Discussion

karolis_devyzis's avatar
karolis_devyzis
Regular Visitor
9 years ago

connection with ftp

Hello,   I know that Power BI should connect to FTP, but I tried several URLs (ftp://ftp.mirror.nl/ ftp://ftp.2600.com) and it does not work. I get the message "Details: "Web.Contents failed to get...
Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
9 years ago

Hi karolis_devyzis,

I get same error message when connecting to the above ftp URLs using Web entry  in Power BI Desktop.

Since Power BI Desktop cannot directly work with FTP sources, you can use FTP commands or third-party tools to bring files down to local folder, then connect to the folder by using the Get Data ->Folder option in Power BI Desktop.



Thanks,
Lydia Zhang

SimenJ's avatar
SimenJ
Frequent Visitor
9 years ago

I have succeeded in using FTP as a  source. I have a .txt file being refreshed several times a day from a third party and I just connect using the csv/txt connector and then input the URL of the file as location (ftp://<server>/<folder>/<filename.txt>).

 

Only problem is that the data gateway does not support refreshing from a ftp.

 

So the workaround was to dump ftp as a direct source in Power BI. Instead, I have used MS Flow to copy the file to a folder on a fileshare whenever there is a new file coming in to the FTP location. Then I can use the .txt file in that folder in my model and set up scheduled refresh of my model from the folder location.