You then use the text to column feature to split out the data into new columns. Imagine you get a sales report in a text file from your system on a monthly basis that looks like this.Įvery month you need to go to the folder where the file is uploaded and open the file and copy the contents into Excel. Get the data used in this post to follow along. If you want to edit or write your own M code, you certainly can, but you definitely don’t need to.

The power query editor records all your transformations step by step and converts them into the M code for you, similar to how the Macro recorder with VBA. The best part about it, is you don’t need to learn or use any code to do any of it. It’s an incredibly short learning curve when compared to other Excel tools like formulas or VBA. The user interface is intuitive and well laid out so it’s really easy to pick up. Power Query can import and clean millions of rows into the data model for analysis after. It allows you to set up a query once and then reuse it with a simple refresh. Power Query is a business intelligence tool available in Excel that allows you to import data from many different sources and then clean, transform and reshape your data as needed.

Office 2016 power query