Help

Re: Airtable link to Excel via Power Query

7271 0
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Matthew_Billio1
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Here is a way to automatically pull information from airtable into Excel via power-Query using a bit of coding.

If you are looking to just copy and paste the code you need without much explanation, ignore the details :slightly_smiling_face:

Details

SECTION 1- CONNECTING EXCEL TO POWERQUERY-

The first issue a user may run into while trying to get data to automatically feed into Excel is creating an authenticated connection to Airtable from Excel’s powerQuery. The following code will be used in a later step, but it is given here as a preview of the code that is chiefly responsible for the data connection to airtable’s api.

Source = Json.Document(Web.Contents(“https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]”, [Headers=[Authorization=“Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”]]))

You will be replacing “[PartialAddressToYourBase]”, “[NameOfYourTable]”, and the “keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX” with your particular information at a later step.

Now even if a query were created with its sole source of data being the above code, the output would be a very useless and unfriendly format; additionally, airtable’s api only allows users to get data via paginated requests… so unless the query looped through all the pages of data, the resulting datasheet in excel would only contain the first few hundred records of data.

SECTION 2- PAGINATING THROUGH AIRTABLE’s DATA

In order to pull ALL of the Base’s data into Excel, the query needs to make calls to Airtables api repeatedly until it reaches the end of the records. So, instead of just setting the query source as using the above code, a query should instead loop through all of the records in the Airtable Base as follows:

let
     Pagination = List.Skip( List.Generate( () => [Page_Key = "init", Counter=0], // Start Value
   	                     each  [Page_Key] <> null, // Condition under which the next execution will happen
                         each  [Page_Key = try if [Counter]<1    
			                                   then "" 
			                                   else  [WebCall][Value][offset] 
			                                   otherwise null, // determine the LastKey for the next execution
		  	                     WebCall  = try if [Counter]<1    
			                                   then  Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]", [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"]]))
			                                   else  Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]?offset="&[WebCall][Value][offset] , [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"]])),// retrieve results per call
			                     Counter = [Counter]+1// internal counter
                                ],
   		                  each [WebCall]
                        ),
                      1
                   )

SECTION 3- FORMATTING THE DATA

Again, as stated at the beginning, the above code will return data in a pretty nasty format. So, the rest of the code is necessary to reformat it in a record by record fashion:

#"Json2Table" =  Table.RenameColumns(Table.FromList(Pagination, Splitter.SplitByNothing(), null, null, ExtraValues.Ignore),{{"Column1", "stepA.1"}}),
#"Expanded to stepA.2" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Json2Table", "stepA.1", {"Value"}, {"stepA.2"}),
#"Expanded to stepA.3" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded to stepA.2", "stepA.2", {"records"}, {"stepA.3"}),
#"Rows from stepA.3" = Table.RenameColumns(Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Expanded to stepA.3", "stepA.3"),{{"stepA.3", "stepB.1"}}),
#"Source Records" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Rows from stepA.3", "stepB.1", {"fields"}, {"Src"}),

Now you have an idea of what the code is doing, proceed to put it all together in a how-to-fashion.

STEP 1.
Copy and paste into Excel’s advanced power query editor the following code.

let
     Pagination = List.Skip( List.Generate( () => [Page_Key = "init", Counter=0], // Start Value
   	                     each  [Page_Key] <> null, // Condition under which the next execution will happen
                         each  [Page_Key = try if [Counter]<1    
			                                   then "" 
			                                   else  [WebCall][Value][offset] 
			                                   otherwise null, // determine the LastKey for the next execution
		  	                     WebCall  = try if [Counter]<1    
			                                   then  Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]", [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"]]))
			                                   else  Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]?offset="&[WebCall][Value][offset] , [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"]])),// retrieve results per call
			                     Counter = [Counter]+1// internal counter
                                ],
   		                  each [WebCall]
                        ),
                      1
                   ),
     #"Json2Table" =  Table.RenameColumns(Table.FromList(Pagination, Splitter.SplitByNothing(), null, null, ExtraValues.Ignore),{{"Column1", "stepA.1"}}),
     #"Expanded to stepA.2" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Json2Table", "stepA.1", {"Value"}, {"stepA.2"}),
     #"Expanded to stepA.3" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded to stepA.2", "stepA.2", {"records"}, {"stepA.3"}),
     #"Rows from stepA.3" = Table.RenameColumns(Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Expanded to stepA.3", "stepA.3"),{{"stepA.3", "stepB.1"}}),
     #"Source" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Rows from stepA.3", "stepB.1", {"fields"}, {"Src"})
in
     #"Source"

STEP 2
Replace the following strings with your particular information:

  1. [PartialAddressToYourBase]

  2. "[NameOfYourTable]"

  3. "keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

For example,

Json.Document(Web.Contents(“https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]”, [Headers=[Authorization=“Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”]]))

Becomes

Json.Document(Web.Contents(“https://api.airtable.com/v0/tb2rvf9QCSxi2QJJ3/Books”, [Headers=[Authorization=“Bearer keyDB8lDEPgMun”]]))

STEP 3
After copying, pasting, and replacing hit “done” in excels Advanced Query Editor. Upon attempting to run the query, a yellow bar will appear at the top of the Power Query application. Click “authenticate” or something like that. A dialog box will pop up asking to authenticate the query. I used regular web authentication at Airtable’s Base level (ex www.airtable.com/v0/tbl21OZVeYPLuPQl4 instead of www.airtable.com).

FINAL STEPS
This part is up to you. Anyone familiar with power query will then be able to run with this process from this point forward.

CREDITS

Apologies for not remembering those who helped me (although I visited many websites, read the airtable api, and had to dig into the powerquery help to figure this out, there was one website that especially helped and I will try to find it and update this post later).

36 Replies 36
Larry_Price
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

I’m doing virtually the same thing to pull my bases into Power BI.

Have you tried grabbing a specific view instead of the entire table? I can’t seem to get it to paginate if I specify a view to pull data from.

Hey Larry,

Yes, here below is a snippet of my code. Basically, you just append the following to the end of your url:

?view=[URLencodedNameOfYourView]

So, the entire line will look something like this:

Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]?view=[URLencodedNameOfYourView]", [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"]]))

You can URL encode the name of your view at this site https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/.
Just type the name of your view, click “encode” and copy and paste it after “?view=”

Also, remember to replace every line of your code with that complete url (“https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]?view=[URLencodedNameOfYourV...”)

So, if you are using a loop, or an If Then formula, it will look something like this:

 WebCall  = try if [Counter]<1    
	               then Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]?view=[URLencodedNameOfYourView]", [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXX]]))
                   else Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]?view=[URLencodedNameOfYourView]&offset="&[WebCall][Value][offset], [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXX"]]))

Matt

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been doing. It won’t return anything past the first 100 though. Same code functions just fine if I don’t specify a view though. Odd. I’ll look at it again. Maybe I’m just making a silly mistake somewhere.

Chris_Taylor
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Larry, I’ve been doing the same thing pulling Airtable tables into Power BI. Found the same code as above in Matthew’s post and got it working great paginating the data. I can’t answer your query about views I’m afraid. But I did stumble upon another problem after I’d built it all in the Desktop in that when trying to refresh in the Power BI service, the web query wouldn’t refresh. Unfortunately, the client has no server infrastructure so we can’t use a gateway to sync the data, so this solution ultimately didn’t work for our situation.

The closest I came to understanding why the web query doesn’t refresh is something to do with the fact the web.contents() query has a dynamic part which the service can’t (or decides it won’t) try to resolve. I explored the possibility of trying to pre-load the offset keys and passing them to the query using an array, but because the airtable API produces offset keys at random, you would have to basically use the same process to retrieve the keys to begin with.

For reference, I’ve built a Flow in Power Apps to do it. Happy to share the solution if it helps. But if you happen to end up in the same situation and you find a solution within Power BI, I’d love to know how you do it!

Hey Larry and @Chris_Taylor ,

Apologies for the delayed response. if you shoot me your code I can look at it. (Of course remove your bearer token, etc.)

I’m not sure what the issue is, for mine is pulling well over 1k records, and it refreshes my data fine.

Regarding refreshing, however if you add columns to airtable, it won’t add those automatically (Power BI’s expand records doesn’t expand them dynamically, but refreshes values based off of static field names).

Pedro_Rivera_T2
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

@Matthew_Billiodeaux1 this was very helpful, thanks for posting it. Any idea how we can get this data to refresh in Power BI Service? So far I can load all the data perfectly to Power BI Desktop thanks to your script, but can’t refresh daily when online, as I get the legend: “Query contains unknown or unsupported data sources”. It seems to be a problem with having null parameters in the blank query, which the Power BI Service apparently doesn’t handle well. I found some information here but can’t seem to adjust the script you provided to work without null:

(links aren’t accepted but you can google this: web-contents-m-functions-and-dataset-refresh-errors-in-power-bi/ )

Thanks for your assist and if you know of a workaround for this additional problem it’d be much appreciated.

Hello Pedro, can you send me a private message with the code of your query. Please replace your Bearer Key with all "B"s and your airtable’s app portion of the link with all "T"s.

Ex…

 Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT/Parcels?view=EXPORT%20(Abstracts%20Report%20Wkly)&offset="&[WebCall][Value][offset] , [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer BBBBBBBBBBBB"]])),// retrieve results per call

Also, can you please send me a private message containing screenshots of the error messages you are getting?

Thanks, but my problem is not connecting, but rather scheduling the refresh.

Hopefully Airtable will release custom connectors with direct query as this would provide a welcome improvement for teams that don’t have the time to integrate solutions.

Thanks again for the post.

Thomas_GOIRAND
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

Hi guys,

Same issue as @Pedro_Rivera_Torres the code is perfect - thank you very much @Larry_Price , but PBI won’t be able to update on the scheduled web service. @Pedro_Rivera_Torres can you tell a bit more about the solution you are referring to? I never heard about direct queries in Airtable…

Unfortunately Power BI only supports very specific data sources for direct query. My hope is that Airtable can develop a custom connector that can support direct query rather than scheduled refresh (which isn’t currently supported either). Currently refresh must be done manually in PowerBI desktop :frowning:

@Pedro_Rivera_Torres I get it. In my opinion, the best solution would be to use Azure Data Factory (it is basically designed for this kind of use) in order to query Airtable and build a daily update in .csv or sql format. Then PBI would be able to update the whole data with scheduled updates.

Pedro_Rivera_T1
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Great to know. Thanks @Thomas_GOIRAND

Nora_Brown
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

We have solved one part of the above issues with refreshing, which is to convert all query parameters to Query options in Json.Document(Web.Contents()). So instead of tacking on “?view=MyView”, add Query=[view=“MyView”] to the options array

Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/[PartialAddressToYourBase]/[NameOfYourTable]", [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer keyXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"],Query=[view="MyView"]]))

That was thanks to this url: http://blog.datainspirations.com/2018/02/17/dynamic-web-contents-and-power-bi-refresh-errors/

The last issue is something with authentication. When we ask to schedule a refresh, it says credentials are not correct, even though we’re using the Anonymous option. We’ve tested the token and it’s correct. Anyone else solve this issue?

Ben_McCabe
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

Hi,

Thank you so much for this it helped me a lot!

I have a table which references other tables in my base. When I pull tables with less than 100 records into powerbi the normal way (entering url in web section of get data) they have id fields so that I can create relationships with other tables in my base in power bi. When I use your code above however the id field does not get pulled in. Is there anyway for this code to also pull in the id field?

Many Thanks,
Ben

Matthew_Billio1
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Hey Ben, hopefully @Nora_Brown replies, because I am really only familiar with Power Query (very similar, but I can’t guarantee that the following applies to your case exactly):

You must massage your data- the code given in this post will only import the data with two columns- a text column called “RecID”, and a column of nested tables called “Src”. After promoting (or “expanding”) the nested table columns, you should see all the field names from airtable as column headers, no?

(screenshots below)

  • image.png
  • image
  • image.png
  • image.png
Nora_Brown
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Hm…I am actually not too familiar with Power BI, I’ve been helping a client remotely. The different ways of making the API call should be completely equivalent though. The data returned should be the same. If you haven’t used it before, Postman is indispensable for testing API calls and seeing what data is returned.

As it turns out we were never able to get a scheduled refresh to work. It’s been extremely frustrating. A Power BI consultant told us it was a bug in Power BI. If anyone figures it out, I’d love to know!

We will probably end up using a desktop program called Power Update to automate the refresh process, which feels very kludgy to me but it’s better than doing it manually!

RGordon013
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

First, thank you for posting these references; I’m still amazed how difficult it is to connect my base to Power Query.

I’ve created my connection but cannot get it to take my credentials. I can’t seem to upload an image or even a link, so bottom line is “A Web API Key can only be specified when a web api key is provided.” I’m using Web API at my base level URL.

Any help is appreciated.

Hi Matthew, Thank you very much for your reply!

I have replicated the code above for my table in Power Query and got the same result where the RecID column isn’t appearing beside the Src column that will expand into my table. (See Screenshot below)
image.png

If you have any idea why this is happening that would be greatly appreciated!

Matthew_Billio1
7 - App Architect
7 - App Architect

Hello @Ben_McCabe,

Apologies (I have two versions of this code, and was looking at the wrong one). The code on this forum will (unfortunately for you) yield the screenshot you have posted.

Try replacing part of your code with this code instead (starting from the “LET” and ending with “Expanded stepB.1”):

let
      Pagination = List.Skip( List.Generate( () => [Page_Key = "init", Counter=0], // Start Value
    	                     each  [Page_Key] <> null, // Condition under which the next execution will happen
                          each  [Page_Key = try if [Counter]<1    
 			                                   then "" 
 			                                   else  [WebCall][Value][offset] 
 			                                   otherwise null, // determine the LastKey for the next execution
 		  	                     WebCall  = try if [Counter]<1    
 			                                   then  Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/AIRTABLE_BASEID/TABLE_NAME?view=VIEW_NAME", [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer key????????????"]]))
 			                                   else  Json.Document(Web.Contents("https://api.airtable.com/v0/AIRTABLE_BASEID/TABLE_NAME?view=VIEW_NAME&offset="&[WebCall][Value][offset] , [Headers=[Authorization="Bearer key????????????"]])),// retrieve results per call
 			                     Counter = [Counter]+1// internal counter
                                 ],
    		                  each [WebCall]
                         ),
                       1
                    ),
      #"Json2Table" =  Table.RenameColumns(Table.FromList(Pagination, Splitter.SplitByNothing(), null, null, ExtraValues.Ignore),{{"Column1", "stepA.1"}}),
      #"Expanded to stepA.2" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Json2Table", "stepA.1", {"Value"}, {"stepA.2"}),
      #"Expanded to stepA.3" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Expanded to stepA.2", "stepA.2", {"records"}, {"stepA.3"}),
      #"Rows from stepA.3" = Table.RenameColumns(Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Expanded to stepA.3", "stepA.3"),{{"stepA.3", "stepB.1"}}),
     #"Expanded stepB.1" = Table.ExpandRecordColumn(#"Rows from stepA.3", "stepB.1", {"id", "fields", "createdTime"}, {"id", "Src", "createdTime"}),

… also, remember to replace the following variables with whatever text is specific for your view/table/user:

  • AIRTABLE_BASEID
  • TABLE_NAME
  • VIEW_NAME (dont forget to use HTML encoding for this name)
  • Bearer key???