File.Contents

Accessing Data

Returns the contents of a file as binary.

Syntax

File.Contents(path as text) as binary

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
`path`	`text`	Yes	The full file path to read.

Return Value

binary — The binary content of the file.

Remarks

File.Contents reads a file from the local file system (or a network share) and returns its contents as a binary value. On its own, binary is not useful — you pipe it into a parser function to interpret the data:

File type	Parser function
CSV / TSV	`Csv.Document(File.Contents("..."), [Delimiter = ","])`
Excel	`Excel.Workbook(File.Contents("..."), true)`
JSON	`Json.Document(File.Contents("..."))`
XML	`Xml.Document(File.Contents("..."))`
Plain text	`Lines.FromBinary(File.Contents("..."))`

Important notes

File.Contents is available in Power BI Desktop and Excel Desktop only. It is not supported in the Power BI Service, Excel Online, or Dataflows because these cloud environments do not have access to local file paths.
For cloud-based scenarios, use a gateway or switch to Web.Contents, SharePoint.Contents, or another cloud-compatible data source.
The path must be a fully qualified path (e.g., "C:\Data\sales.csv" or "\\server\share\file.xlsx").

Typical pattern

let
    Source = File.Contents("C:\Reports\quarterly.csv"),
    Parsed = Csv.Document(Source, [Delimiter = ",", Encoding = TextEncoding.Utf8]),
    Promoted = Table.PromoteHeaders(Parsed, [PromoteAllScalars = true])
in
    Promoted

Compatibility

✓ Power BI Desktop✗ Power BI Service✓ Excel Desktop✗ Excel Online✗ Dataflows✗ Fabric Notebooks

Contributors