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Summary

Item Description
Release State General Availability
Products Excel
Power BI (Semantic models)
Power BI (Dataflows)
Fabric (Dataflow Gen2)
Power Apps (Dataflows)
Dynamics 365 Customer Insights
Analysis Services
Authentication Types Supported Anonymous
Basic (Web only)
Organizational Account
Web API (Web only)
Windows
Function Reference Documentation Json.Document

Note

Some capabilities may be present in one product but not others due to deployment schedules and host-specific capabilities.

Capabilities supported

  • Import

Load a local JSON file from Power Query Desktop

To load a local JSON file:

  1. Select the JSON option in the Get Data selection. This selection launches a local file browser where you can select your JSON file.

    Image of the file browser with two JSON files to choose from.

  2. Select Open to open the file.

Loading the JSON file will automatically launch the Power Query Editor. Power Query uses automatic table detection to seamlessly flatten the JSON data into a table. From the editor, you can then continue to transform the data if you want, or you can just close and apply. More information: Automatic table detection from JSON files

Image of the Power Query editor with the JSON data flattened into a table.

Load a local JSON file from Power Query Online

To load a local JSON file:

  1. From the Data sources page, select JSON.

  2. Enter the path to the local JSON file.

    Image of the JSON connection setting dialog from the online service, with a file path, data gateway, and Windows authentication kind displayed.

  3. Select an on-premises data gateway from Data gateway.

  4. If authentication is required, enter your credentials.

  5. Select Next.

Loading the JSON file will automatically launch the Power Query Editor. Power Query uses automatic table detection to seamlessly flatten the JSON data into a table. From the editor, you can then continue to transform the data if you want, or you can just save and close to load the data. More information: Automatic table detection from JSON files

Image of the online Power Query editor with the JSON data flattened into a table.

Load from the web

To load a JSON file from the web, select the Web connector, enter the web address of the file, and follow any credential prompts.

Automatic table detection from JSON files

Importing data from JSON files (or Web APIs) can be challenging for end users. Here is an example of JSON file with multiple levels of nested data.

Image of the contents of a JSON file with nested data.

With the addition of automatic table detection capabilities, using the JSON connector in Power Query will automatically apply transformation steps to flatten the JSON data into a table. Previously, users had to flatten records and lists manually.

Automatic table detection.

Troubleshooting

If you see the following message, it might be because the file is invalid, for example, it's not really a JSON file, or is malformed. Or you might be trying to load a JSON Lines file.

Image of the unable to connect message.

If you're trying to load a JSON Lines file, the following sample M code converts all JSON Lines input to a single flattened table automatically:

let
    // Read the file into a list of lines
    Source = Table.FromColumns({Lines.FromBinary(File.Contents("C:\json-lines-example.json"), null, null)}),
    // Transform each line using Json.Document
    #"Transformed Column" = Table.TransformColumns(Source, {"Column1", Json.Document})
in
    #"Transformed Column"

You'll then need to use an Expand operation to combine the lines together.