Power BI OData.Feed: find out why the feed fails

Power BI Desktop, Excel and Dataflows read OData through OData.Feed. When that call fails, the message rarely says which part of the service is the problem. The $metadata document usually does.

"The feed's metadata document appears to be invalid"

Power Query parses the whole $metadata before it shows the navigator. Load the same URL here: the viewer reports parse problems with line numbers and lists the model even when a part of it is odd. Things to look for:

• Navigation properties pointing to types that do not exist — shown as unresolved targets.
• External annotation files (edmx:Reference) that Power Query cannot fetch.
• Very large services: Power Query reads every entity set; check the counts on the overview.

HTTP 406 on SAP Gateway V2

Power Query asks for application/json;odata.metadata=minimal, which older Gateway releases reject. The viewer shows which version the service declares (DataServiceVersion) so you know whether to use OData.Feed(url, null, [Implementation="2.0"]).

Columns missing or of the wrong type

Open the entity type in the detail panel: types, nullability, precision and sap: flags are listed per property. Properties with sap:visible="false" or without sap:filterable explain many surprises.

Getting the query right first

Use the data explorer to try $filter, $select and $expand against the live service, then copy the result as Power Query M. Folding works best when the filter is already in the URL.

Load your service