PL-300 Prepare the data Practice Question
You are connecting to a SharePoint folder that contains Excel workbooks. Each workbook has multiple sheets. You need to combine data from a specific sheet named 'Sales' across all workbooks. Which Power Query approach should you use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse the SharePoint folder connector with the SharePoint Online List connector, mistakenly thinking the list connector can access document libraries, when it is strictly for list data.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use the SharePoint folder connector, filter by .xlsx, then expand the Content column and filter by sheet name 'Sales'.
The SharePoint folder connector retrieves all files in the folder, including Excel workbooks. By filtering for .xlsx files and then expanding the Content column, you access the binary data of each workbook. You can then filter by the 'Sales' sheet name to combine data from that specific sheet across all workbooks, which is the only approach that directly handles multiple workbooks with multiple sheets.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use the SharePoint Online List connector and select the document library.
Why it's wrong here
The SharePoint Online List connector is designed to fetch data from SharePoint lists, not to read the actual contents of files stored in a document library. Although a document library appears as a list in SharePoint, the connector only returns metadata columns such as file name, path, and modification date, and it does not expose the binary payload of .xlsx workbooks. Trying to select the document library this way would therefore yield a list of files but none of the worksheet data needed for analysis.
- ✓
Use the SharePoint folder connector, filter by .xlsx, then expand the Content column and filter by sheet name 'Sales'.
Why this is correct
Using the SharePoint folder connector is the correct approach because it connects to a library folder and returns a table with one row per file, including a Content column that stores the raw binary data of each Excel workbook. After filtering that table to .xlsx files, you expand the Content column, which invokes Power Query's Excel parser to load each workbook and list all its worksheets. Applying a filter on the sheet name to 'Sales' ensures that exactly the sheet you need is combined across all matching workbooks, making this the native and reliable method for importing multiple Excel files from a SharePoint folder.
- ✗
Use the Excel connector and specify the folder path.
Why it's wrong here
The Excel connector only accepts a direct file path to a specific .xlsx or .xls file; it has no capability to operate on a folder, directory, or container. If you supply a SharePoint folder path, the connector attempts to treat that path as a single file, resulting in an error such as 'File not found' or 'We couldn't connect to the folder'. Even in the unlikely event the path resolved, the connector would still load only one workbook, so it cannot enumerate or combine multiple Excel files within the folder.
- ✗
Use the Web connector and provide the SharePoint site URL.
Why it's wrong here
The Web connector is meant for accessing HTML tables from web pages via URL, typically using Web.Contents, but a SharePoint site URL returns the page's HTML markup rather than the raw Excel files that live inside a document library. It will not traverse the folder hierarchy, nor will it parse binary workbook contents; any HTML tables it finds would be unrelated to the data inside the 'Sales' worksheet. As a result, this option is fundamentally misaligned with the goal of reading and combining Excel files from SharePoint.
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