Solve the Formula.Firewall Error in Power Query

The Formula Firewall error is a data privacy error you might get when sharing Power Query Excel files and it's basically Excel's way of saying you have an external data source when it seems like you don't. One way to mitigate this is to change the privacy setting to ignore this message, but when you're collaborating with other, they might not feel comfortable doing this. The other option is to set up a bridge or staging querying. This involves getting into the M code, but it's not so bad. This video talks about the table that takes in user input on where the folder path is for a file but those detail instructions are in another video at https://youtu.be/ignTb_UozTw. This one will cover mostly on how to solve the Formula Firewall issue.

Share Power Query File - Formula.Firewall Error Workaround

When you're sharing files that use Power Query and it sources a data file from a separate workbook, you might come across multiple issues like the DataSource.Error or Formula.Firewall error message. A way to get around these issues is to ask the user you're working with to change or update a few settings. It's not too complicated so check out the video to learn how.

How to Fix the DataSource.Error Message in Power Query

If you're sharing or collaborating with other intermediate Power Query users and source data from large files, you don't want to send those large files back and forth if it doesn't change. Basically your transformation or analysis file is the changing item and when you share that file, the source for the data is going to change; hence you might get the dreaded DataSource.error message. There's a couple ways to deal with this error like replacing the source in the query steps and then refreshing. In this video, it'll cover a way to use the parameter feature in Power Query to set up a path to the source and reference that path in the query step.