Error when adding rows to a sharepoint excel workbook table MaxRequestDurationExceeded

Question

here is the full error

{
    "error": {
        "code": "MaxRequestDurationExceeded",
        "message": "We're sorry. We couldn't finish what you asked us to do because it was taking too long.",
        "innerError": {
            "code": "gatewayTimeoutUncategorized",
            "message": "The service wasn't able to complete the request within the time limit.",
            "innerError": {
                "code": "MaxRequestDurationExceeded",
                "message": "We're sorry. We couldn't finish what you asked us to do because it was taking too long."
            },
            "date": "2020-11-24T02:48:23",
            "request-id": "a3f533ea-3d8e-4bb6-aa71-4eaf10b79364",
            "client-request-id": "a3f533ea-3d8e-4bb6-aa71-4eaf10b79364"
        }
    }
}

when I'm trying to add records to an excel file, I get this error message which is a bit unclear. At first I was sending 5k to 8k excel records per post so I thought because I was sending too much. what I did was send only 3k records for every post but still I get this error.

I assumed that the excel sharepoint file need some time to refresh the newly posted data so I added a time delay for 3 minutes after a post command but I get the error

I also tried in postman where I only send 1 test record and I still get the same error, not sure why.

Upon further checking, there appears to be a limit of a workbook size that is in sharepoint. 50mb is the limit, and our excel file is already at 40mb. It is already close, but still I got 10 more mb to use so there shouldn't be any issues.

Currently the excel sharepoint file has 1 million plus records

**yeah we might have to rethink treating the sharepoint excel file as a database but for now I'd like to see what causes the error mentioned since it doesn't really give much details.

edit: additional details, earlier when I was checking there are a few instances that the test records are actually added in the excel file but the response is still the mentioned error message

also I didn't posted the code since it was working last week so I think the error is not related to my code but due to some other variables that I'm not aware of

Answer 1

it seems sharepoint is now allowing anymore addition to the excel file since it already has tons of records. as per these limits:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/excel-specifications-and-limits-1672b34d-7043-467e-8e27-269d656771c3

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/file-size-limits-for-workbooks-in-sharepoint-9e5bc6f8-018f-415a-b890-5452687b325e

but still it is a bit weird that the endpoint does not return a more informative error message.