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noahrivett's avatar
noahrivett
Frequent Visitor
9 months ago
Solved

Unable to get data from sharepoint folder

When ever i try to get data from a sharepoint folder. i put in the URL and i get an error "An exception occurred: We experienced an error when trying to access the data gateway:". how can i fix this ...
Need Help
  • noahrivett's avatar
    noahrivett
    9 months ago

    This Issue was caused my me orginally creating the model on desktop and then uploading it to power bi online which for some reason prevented it from importing any new data at all. kept getting the same error if i tried to link it to a one drive file and would give the error when i would upload an excel file to it

    The issue was fixed by me just recreating the model on power bi as that allow me to import data from any source

    Thanks for the help

MohdZaid_'s avatar
MohdZaid_
Super User
9 months ago

Hey noahrivett  , 

 

I ran into the same issue when trying to connect a SharePoint folder in Power BI Service after everything worked fine in Power BI Desktop. The root cause was that the web service requires a proper cloud connection, not a gateway connection, for SharePoint sources.


 

Here’s what fixed it for me:

  1. Use “SharePoint Folder” with the site root only
    In Power BI Service, create a new data source and enter only the site URL, e.g.:
    https://yourcompany.sharepoint.com/sites/YourSite
    Do not paste the full library/folder path.

  2. Set the authentication method correctly
    Choose:
    OAuth2 → Organizational Account → Sign In
    (Anything else will trigger the gateway error.)

  3. Remove the gateway mapping
    SharePoint Online does not need a gateway.
    Go to Manage Gateways → remove any mapping to this dataset so Power BI doesn’t try to use the data gateway.

  4. Refresh credentials in the dataset
    Dataset → Settings → Data Source Credentials → Re-enter with OAuth2.

After doing this, Power BI Service connected instantly and the dataset refreshed without errors. The key insight was that the service always tries to use cloud credentials for SharePoint, and forcing a gateway will break the connection every time.