Microsoft Excel Feature Spotlight: Power Query
Our leader, Jennifer Buchholz is attending the 2022 Virtual Global Excel Summit and one of the biggest takeaways is:
Power Query is one of the most inclusive tools for Excel - you don't have to know any coding to take advantage of it.
So just what is Power Query in Microsoft Excel? We will take a look at the basics of what makes Power Query such an exciting tool for businesses to use!
What is Power Query in Microsoft Excel?
With Power Query (called Get & Transform Data in previous Excel versions), you can import or connect to external data, and then shape that data, for example, remove a column, change a data type, or merge tables, in ways that meet your needs. Then, you can load your query into Excel to create charts and reports. Periodically, you can refresh the data to make it up-to-date.
There are four phases to using Power Query.
Power Query common steps
Connect Make connections to data in the cloud, on a service, or locally
Transform Shape data to meet your needs, while the original source remains unchanged
Combine Integrate data from multiple sources to get a unique view into the data
Load Complete your query and load it into a worksheet or Data Model and periodically refresh it.
Why Should You Use Power Query?
Data Sources: You can load data into power query editor from different data sources, like, CSV, TXT, JSON, etc.
Transform and clean up Data: Normally you use formulas and pivot tables for data transformations but with power query, you can do a lot of things just with clicks.
Real-Time: Write a query once and you can refresh it every time there is a change in data, and it will transform the new data which you have updated.
It's been our mission to share the capabilities of PowerQuery because it simply automates data cleanup.
If you spend ANY time regularly cleaning up data, you MUST learn PowerQuery. Let's connect!