What causes Fabric Copy Activity Error 20703?

A transient service disruption or throttling on the sink data store prevented metadata retrieval after the copy completed. The service principal or managed identity lacks metadata-read permissions on the sink container or file system. The sink data store does not support metadata retrieval operations required for consistency validation. Network issues between the Fabric runtime and the sink store interrupted the post-copy metadata check

How do I fix Fabric Copy Activity Error 20703?

Step 1: Check the health and availability of the sink data store at the time the error occurred and review any service health notifications.. Step 2: Verify that the linked service identity (service principal or managed identity) has read and metadata permissions on the sink container or file path.. Step 3: Review sink store access logs to confirm whether the metadata request was received and rejected or never reached the store.. Step 4: Retry the pipeline run to determine if the error is transient; implement retry policies on the Copy Activity if transient failures are common in your environment.. Step 5: If the sink store does not natively support metadata retrieval, disable 'validateDataConsistency' in the Copy Activity payload to prevent this check from running.

High severityconnectivityMicrosoft Fabric →

Power BI Refresh Error:
Fabric Copy Activity Error 20703

What does this error mean?

The Copy Activity could not retrieve metadata for a sink file needed to validate data consistency. This error is caused by a transient issue on the sink data store or by insufficient permissions to access sink file metadata.

Common causes

1A transient service disruption or throttling on the sink data store prevented metadata retrieval after the copy completed
2The service principal or managed identity lacks metadata-read permissions on the sink container or file system
3The sink data store does not support metadata retrieval operations required for consistency validation
4Network issues between the Fabric runtime and the sink store interrupted the post-copy metadata check

How to fix it

1Step 1: Check the health and availability of the sink data store at the time the error occurred and review any service health notifications.
2Step 2: Verify that the linked service identity (service principal or managed identity) has read and metadata permissions on the sink container or file path.
3Step 3: Review sink store access logs to confirm whether the metadata request was received and rejected or never reached the store.
4Step 4: Retry the pipeline run to determine if the error is transient; implement retry policies on the Copy Activity if transient failures are common in your environment.
5Step 5: If the sink store does not natively support metadata retrieval, disable 'validateDataConsistency' in the Copy Activity payload to prevent this check from running.

Frequently asked questions

How is error 20703 different from error 20701?

Error 20701 occurs when metadata cannot be retrieved from the source file before or during the copy, while error 20703 occurs when metadata cannot be retrieved from the sink file after the copy. Both relate to data consistency validation but target different ends of the copy operation.

Is the data actually copied when error 20703 occurs?

Typically yes — the data copy itself may have succeeded, but the post-copy metadata validation step failed. You should verify the sink file exists and check its size or row count manually before treating the data as reliable.