Troubleshooting “Unexpected Value” Error in Azure DevOps YAML Pipelines

Azure DevOps YAML pipelines provide an efficient way to define your CI/CD pipelines in code. However, you might encounter an error during pipeline creation or execution that reads:

Errors:
1
/azure-pipelines.yml (Line: 31, Col: 3): Unexpected value

This error typically indicates a syntax or structural problem in your azure-pipelines.yml file. YAML is very strict about indentation, proper key-value pairs, and expected sections in the file. Any deviation from the correct structure can result in an error like the one you're seeing.

In this article, we’ll walk through common causes of the “Unexpected value” error, how to resolve it, and best practices to avoid such errors in Azure DevOps YAML pipelines.

1. Understanding the Error Message

The error message provides two crucial pieces of information:

• Line and Column Number: In this case, the error is on line 31, column 3. This gives you an exact location in your YAML file to start troubleshooting.
• “Unexpected value”: This means that at this position, Azure DevOps found a value or key that doesn’t belong there according to the expected YAML structure.

2. Common Causes of…