Skills level: Advanced I am using Power Query more and more often to automate tasks by setting up the steps that it takes to clean up certain reports that I receive on a monthly basis. As soon as the latest report is out, Power Query knows exactly what to do with it, and cleans it up exactly the same way it did last time. It saves a lot of time and eliminates tedious processing and gets the file pivot-ready or ready to analyse in no time. Very soon after learning the basic functions of Power Query, I got stuck with an error in my date column. What can possibly be wrong with a date? I spent some time reading up (no, Googling) for solutions and found the reason why power query cannot process the dates (in some instances) in an imported file.
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Skills level: Advanced Power Query is by far one of my favourite excel features. I am sure that you have dealt with messy data reports that just make your life difficult. It wastes so much time to rearrange columns, rows or cells, deal with blank entries, empty spaces, duplicates, unnecessary columns, messy formats… You name it, we have all seen it. Power query is there to save the day. Literally… If you know how to use power query, it will save so much time, you will have days left over at the end of the month with nothing to do! Power query has a number of functions that you can apply to your data which is specifically designed to clean up and transform your data. It deals with the typical problems that you are faced with when working with all sorts of reports with different layouts and formats. It then stores or remembers the steps that you have taken, and re-apply them when new data is added to your report. It almost works like a macro would, but you can use power query without having to learn any coding.
It is really a powerful tool, and deals with those boring repetitive tasks, that you perform week after week, month after month, so that you can concentrate on the more important things in your career or in your life. |
Carine HoughHi, and welcome to my blog :) I am an Excel enthusiast and want to help others keen on improving their own Excel skills. I hope you learn something useful on my blog. Categories
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