Failed to validate user configuration and data. 1. The data file does not exists. Ensure data correctness and availability Error message meaning when running an AutoML job

Question

Asking as the following error message is not very helpful -

Failed to validate user configuration and data.
 1. The data file does not exists. Ensure data correctness and availability.

Whenever I try spin off a forecasting job in AutoML, the above error pops up. However, I've been able to successfully run AutoML examples provided by microsoft.

Can anyone give insights what might be causing this? Is the data that I'm supplying is not correct? For context, I'm trying to setup a forecasting job using ElasticNet algorithm and the data I'm using contains time date, target column and other features as well. Also, I've already converted the data to MLTable format for AutoML.

TIA

Answer 1

@Das Gupta, Abhijeet

Thanks for reaching out out to us. The error message "Failed to validate user configuration and data. The data file does not exists. Ensure data correctness and availability." usually means that the data file you are trying to use for your AutoML job cannot be found or accessed. This could be due to a number of reasons, such as incorrect file path, incorrect file name, or incorrect file format.

To troubleshoot this issue, you can try the following steps:

• Double-check the file path and file name to ensure that they are correct and that the file exists in the specified location.
• Check the file format to ensure that it is compatible with AutoML. AutoML requires that the data be in tabular format with each variable having its own corresponding column in the data table. AutoML also requires at least two columns: a time column representing the time axis and the target column which is the quantity to forecast. Other columns can serve as predictors.
• Ensure that the data has been properly converted to MLTable format for AutoML. You can refer to the MLTable how-to guide for more information and use cases.

If you confirm that all looks good on your end, could you please share the code sample and data sample to us so that we can reproduce the error? Thanks a lot.

Regards,

Yutong

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