# Not found: Table was not found in location

> BigQuery says a table was not found only when it was willing to look. The same typo can give you Access Denied instead, and which one you get tells you something useful about your access.

Source: https://docs.querylab.io/bigquery-errors/not-found-table-was-not-found-in-location/

Updated: 2026-10-25

```text
Not found: Table bigquery-public-data:samples.Shakespeare was not found in location US
```

## What BigQuery means

The dataset was readable and the table was not in it.

BigQuery only answers "not found" for a table when you are allowed to list the dataset's tables. If you cannot, it refuses to confirm or deny the table at all and you get [Access Denied](https://docs.querylab.io/bigquery-errors/access-denied-user-does-not-have-permission-to-query-table/) instead.

So the two messages are a crude access probe:

| Message                                                                         | What it tells you                                                                 |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `Not found: Table PROJECT:DATASET.TABLE was not found in location L`            | you can read the dataset. The table name is wrong, or the table is not there yet. |
| `Not found: Dataset PROJECT:DATASET was not found in location L`                | you can read the project. The dataset is not there in that location.              |
| `Access Denied: Table PROJECT:DATASET.TABLE: User does not have permission ...` | BigQuery never looked. You cannot read the dataset, or it does not exist.         |

The `location` at the end is where the job ran, not a property of the table. See [Not found: Dataset was not found in location](https://docs.querylab.io/bigquery-errors/not-found-dataset-was-not-found-in-location/) for the region side of this.

## The smallest query that reproduces it

Correct project, correct dataset, wrong case on the table name:

```sql
SELECT 1 FROM `bigquery-public-data.samples.Shakespeare`
```

The table is `shakespeare`. Table names are case-sensitive, and so are dataset names, but a wrong-case dataset lands in the Access Denied bucket instead:

```sql
SELECT 1 FROM `bigquery-public-data.SAMPLES.shakespeare`
```

```text
Access Denied: Table bigquery-public-data:SAMPLES.shakespeare: User does not have permission to query table bigquery-public-data:SAMPLES.shakespeare, or perhaps it does not exist.
```

Two typos of the same kind, two different messages, because of which lookup failed first.

## The fix

Work through the name one part at a time.

1. **Case.** `Orders` and `orders` are different tables. Copy the name from the schema browser rather than retyping it.
2. **Backticks.** All three of `` `my-project.ds.t` ``, `` `my-project`.ds.t `` and the bare `my-project.ds.t` resolve in a `FROM` clause. If you quote the whole path in one pair of backticks, though, the table gets no short implicit alias, so `t.col` elsewhere in the query fails with `Unrecognized name`.
3. **The dataset actually holds it.** A table created in `DWH_DEV` is not in `DWH`. Scheduled jobs that write to one and read from the other are the usual way this happens.
4. **Freshly created tables.** A `CREATE TABLE` in the same script runs before the `SELECT`, but a table created by another job a second ago can still be invisible to a dry run.
5. **Date-sharded names.** `events_20260101` exists, `events_20260132` does not. If you build the suffix with string formatting, print it.

## Variants

| Message                                                                 | Cause                                                                                      |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `Table "orders" must be qualified with a dataset (e.g. dataset.table).` | no dataset in the name and no default dataset on the job                                   |
| `Not found: Dataset PROJECT:DATASET was not found in location L`        | the dataset part is wrong, or the dataset is in another region                             |
| `Unrecognized name: orders at [1:31]`                                   | a column resolution error, not a table one. The name was used where a column was expected. |
| `PROJECT:DATASET.events_* does not match any table.`                    | a wildcard table whose prefix matches nothing                                              |

The job's `error_result.reason` for the two "Not found" messages is `notFound`. The qualification and wildcard messages come back as `invalid`, and `Unrecognized name` as `invalidQuery`.

## Wildcard tables

A wildcard prefix that matches no table at all is its own error, and it says so plainly:

```sql
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `my-project.logs.evnts_*`
```

```text
my-project:logs.evnts_* does not match any table.
```

If the prefix is right but the query returns no rows, the problem is the `_TABLE_SUFFIX` filter instead. A `SELECT table_name FROM my-project.logs.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES` shows what the suffixes actually look like. See [Wildcard tables](https://docs.querylab.io/bigquery/wildcard-tables/).

## In Querylab.io

Querylab.io dry-runs the query as you type and puts the message on the table name in the editor, for free, before you run anything.

## Sources

Based on the BigQuery documentation by Google, CC BY 4.0, rewritten with examples checked against BigQuery:

- [Troubleshoot query issues](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/troubleshoot-queries)

- [Dataset locations](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/locations)

- [Projects, datasets, and tables](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/datasets-intro)