---
title: Quick Tip - Connecting to a SharePoint Folder in Power BI
description: Learn a quick tip about connecting to a SharePoint folder in Power BI.
---

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# [Quick Tip - Connecting to a SharePoint Folder in Power BI](https://pragmaticworks.com/blog/quick-tip-connecting-to-a-sharepoint-folder-in-power-bi)

 Written by [Mitchell Pearson](https://pragmaticworks.com/blog/author/mitchell-pearson) | Sep 20, 2018

Recently, when teaching the Advanced Power BI Course by Pragmatic Works, I had a student ask how to use the SharePoint Folder in Power BI. She had been struggling with getting it to work correctly. After trying a few different URLs, I could see why she was having a problem. Since you’re reading this, you are probably having the same kind of issues. The error message is actually pretty good, but a little confusing. When the error says “the site’s root URL only” I took this to mean SharePoint’s URL, however, it actually means the URL of the site within SharePoint.

## The URL isn’t valid. Please enter the site’s root URL only.

<https://mitchellsql.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/image.png>

Let’s take a look at how you can properly connect to a SharePoint Folder in Power BI and extract the files.

## Connecting to a SharePoint Folder in Power BI

In my first attempt I tried connecting to simply the root of my SharePoint site.

[https://pragmaticworksonline.sharepoint.com](https://pragmaticworksonline.sharepoint.com/)

<https://mitchellsql.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/image1.png>

This only allowed access to the Shared Documents folder on the root and therefore didn’t work.

<https://mitchellsql.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/image2.png>

As you can see in the above image, this only allowed access to the Shared Documents folder on the root of the SharePoint site.

## Connecting to a specific SharePoint site

Next, I tried connecting directly to the root of a particular site. I connected to the training site on SharePoint using the following URL:

<https://mitchellsql.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/image3.png>

This worked, the SharePoint folder option will traverse subfolders, just like the default from folder option. Therefore, if you are looking for a particular directory then you can simply apply a filter in the Power Query Editor on the Folder Path property.

Thanks for reading this blog!

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