Excel Power Query

Unit 3: Extract Data  

In this unit you will learn how to: 

Extract data from excel table  

To extract data from Excel the data most be stored in an Excel Table.  

What is a Table? 

In Excel, a table is a specially designated range of numbers. This special range of numbers has added functionality that other cell ranges do not have. You can have more than one table in a workbook or worksheet if you want, and tables can be as large or small as the amount of data you want to work with. 

Normally a table is made from adjacent columns of data, with a unique label or heading for each column. Each row in the table should have entries organised according to the column headings. You should keep your table data adjacent in a block to take advantage of all of Excel’s table features. Some Excel features, like filters and PivotTables, will not work correctly if the data is not blocked together in adjacent columns as a table. 

One of the key advantages with working with a Table is that the table range will automatically increase as more rows are added. If you have used an Excel Table as the basis for a PivotTable, when the PivotTable is refreshed it will grow to accommodate these new rows. These new rows can either be typed manually or pasted on to the bottom of the table. 

Creating Tables 

To create a table from an existing range: 

Extract data from web 

Click From Web, enter the URL and click OK. The Navigator will display the data and again the data can now be loaded to the destination workbook, or loaded as connection only, or if you want to edit the query, you can click Transform. 

Unit 4: Transform Columns & Add Columns  

In this unit you will learn how to: 

Use Group By to group source data 

The Group By option can be used to get subtotals from source data and can be very useful if you have many to many relationships between multiple source tables. Any number of columns can be grouped, and any number of aggregations can be applied to the query. 

Calculate columns 

We can make any number of calculated columns in Power Query. This can be useful to automate all steps. In this example we have quarterly profit from clients and want a calculated column to display annually income. 

Click Custom Column on the Add Column tab. Give the column a name and type the calculation in the Custom column formula box. On the Available columns list all for the calculated column available columns are listed. Just double click on the column name in the Available columns list when you need to reference the column in the calculation. Here it is just a simple sum. 

Click OK and the calculated column will now show in the query editor. 

Use text functions in columns 

We have text functions in Power Query. Text can be split to many columns. Text can be concatenated. We can clean text from unwanted spaced and unprintable characters and much more.