There's a specific kind of frustration in watching something that should take seconds spin into oblivion. When a query pulling ten to twenty rows from Access gets stuck on "Loading data…" while larger, more complex queries finish without issue, the instinct is to assume something deeply wrong was done. But nothing was. No VBA. No filters. No sorting. Just a simple, direct pull that refuses to complete. That user isn't alone, and they aren't the problem.
We have seen this pattern enough to know it isn't a mistake in the query. It is a mismatch between what the tool expects and what the connection can deliver. Power Query is powerful, but it is also sensitive to how data sources report their metadata. When Access sends back column type information that doesn't fully align with what Power Query anticipates, the engine can stall mid-load. It isn't a failure of complexity. It is a failure of handshake. The data is there, the query is sound, but the bridge between them has a small crack that causes the whole load to hesitate indefinitely.
For anyone stuck in this loop, the practical fix is rarely inside the query itself. Look upstream. Check whether the Access queries return consistent column types, especially when some rows might contain nulls in key fields. Even a single ambiguous column can cause Power Query to pause while it tries to reconcile the schema. Another check: disable the "Enable load to worksheet" option temporarily and load the data to the Query Editor only. If it loads there instantly, the problem is downstream, likely a pivot table refresh conflict or a corrupted data model connection. The point is, the culprit is almost never the few rows of data. It is the invisible metadata negotiation happening before a single cell is written.
This is the kind of problem that makes people feel foolish for asking for help, and that is precisely why we are stating this plainly: you are not foolish. The tool is doing something opaque. The gap between what you asked it to do and what it is actually doing is hidden behind a progress bar that offers no clues. The answer is to stop waiting for the bar to move and start checking the connections. A ten-row query should never stall. When it does, the fault is in the environment, not the intent. Go find the handshake that failed.