Dataflow - Dataformat.error - Can not locate error

[Jamez_P]

Hi,

A database is being queried with the same query but with different WHERE filters so that all data edited <current month is extracted to a CSV file that is saved in a sharepoint folder and data edited =current month will be refreshed thorugh a URL on an hourly basis.

I have used a dataflow (as I think that is the correct tool) to connect the CSV and the live query using JSON, they both load in the preview, the standard steps are generated and then the CSV is appended to the live query. PowerBI seems happy, I close it and click refresh and it fails every time.

The error code in the .csv is as follows:
Error: DataFormat.Error: We couldn't convert to Number. <ccon><div><font size=""2"">640 hours: support and coordination hours</font></div></ccon>. RootActivityId = 66f58c15-c737-4a74-9e8f-231fd3de4c9c.Param1 = DataFormat.Error: We couldn't convert to Number. <ccon><div><font size=""2"">640 hours: support and coordination hours</font></div></ccon> Request ID: f6377898-359b-e411-2811-7e23e661ebf5. 

I have no idea what this is actually referencing. When I load the dataflow in PowerBi desktop, it says the tables are empty.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

[v-tangjie-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jamez_P ,

This error may be due to an automatic conversion attempt to convert text to numbers. You can try opening the dataflow and modifying the data type change step for the problematic column to change the type to text.

If your dataflow is a standard dataflow, rather than an analytic dataflow, you may not be able to access it through the Get Data from Dataverse operation. You can access it by fetching data from the Dataverse, or by creating an analytic dataflow and then accessing it by fetching data from the dataflow.

If you want to use the dataflow as a DirectQuery source, you may need to enable it first. Once the Enhanced Compute Engine is enabled, you can then use DirectQuery to connect to the dataflow.

Please refer to the following documents for more information.

Error DataFormat.Error: We couldn't convert to Num... - Microsoft Power BI Community

Troubleshooting dataflow issue - get data from dataflow - Power Query | Microsoft Learn

DataFormat.Error: We couldn't parse the input prov... - Microsoft Power BI Community

Best Regards,

Neeko Tang

If this post  helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution  to help the other members find it more quickly. 

[Jamez_P]

Hi, thank you for your response, you were indeed correct, to find the errors, I opended the csv file in excel and search for the text given by the error message and saw that the column type was indeed being incorrectly being automatically selected by powerbi, after correcting that the errors went away and the auto refreshes worked.