Power Query Tutorial - What Is It, How To Use, Full Examples, Tips & Tricks

09/01/23, 18:56 Power Query Tutorial - What is it, How to use, Full examples, Tips & Tricks
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 Power Query
Power Query Tutorial – What

is it, How to use, Full
examples, Tips & Tricks
Last updated: August 2020
Chandoo
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Power Query (Get & Transform data in Excel) is a true game changer. It can simplify and automate various
data activities. The key benefits of Power Query are,
 Connect to any type of data source and fetch data
 Define process for data cleansing and transformation
 Combine datasets (table joins, appends)
 Automate data collection & management tasks (refresh etc.)
In this Power Query Tutorial, learn what it does, how to use it with 4 practical examples, tips & tricks to
work with Power Query better.
https://chandoo.org/wp/power-query-tutorial/ 1/26
Table of Contents 
1. What is Power Query?
2. How does Power Query look?
2.1. Power Query Window - 6 Important Areas
3. How to activate Power Query?
3.1. Launching Power Query from Excel
3.2. Power Query from Power BI
4. Power Query Tutorial - Video
5. Power Query as a Mind-map
6. How to use Power Query? Four Examples
6.1. Power Query Example 1: Load and Clean-up Employee Data
6.2. Power Query Example 2: Scraping Web Data & Reshaping it
6.3. Power Query Example 3: Combine data from all files in a folder
6.4. Power Query Example 4: Joining and Appending Tables
7. Download Power Query Examples
8. Power Query - My Top 5 Tips
9. Power Query - Recommended Resources
9.1. Power Query Books
9.2. Power Query Courses
9.3. Power Query Web Sites
9.4. More PQ examples on Chandoo.org
What is Power Query?

Power Query is a feature of Microsoft Excel and Power BI programs. Power Query is used to,
Set up connections to various data sources

Pre-process data – ex: cleanup, adding columns, filtering, sorting, mashing up
Publish the finalized data to source system – Excel or Power BI
Think of Power Query as your own SQL (querying) tool built in to Excel (or Power BI). Use it to manipulate,
mash-up and manage your data.
How does Power Query look?

Power Query window looks almost like Excel workbook. This is why most beginners get confused. The key
thing to remember is, Power Query is for connecting, cleaning and manipulating data. You do this by
applying steps on your data.
Here is an example of Power Query editor window with 6 key areas highlighted. Click on the image to
expand.
Power Query Window - 6 Important

Areas
1. Ribbon: You will see the ribbons on top of Power Query editor UI. There is home ribbon where
common query options like column / row adjustments, clean-up and joins are found. The other
ribbons are transform, add column and view.
2. Queries Pane: This is where all the queries (or connections) you have in the workbook are
listed. You can select a query to preview its results and work on it.
3. Data view: You find the preview of current step of selected query here. As you make changes to
the data, this preview is updated. This data view looks almost like Excel spreadsheet view.
4. Query settings: You can adjust query name, see all the applied steps here. We use this to
make changes to the query or delete any steps.
5. Formula bar (optional): The optional formula bar shows corresponding M Language code for
current step. You can enable / disable this formula bar from “View ribbon”.
6. Close & Load button: This button, also shown as “Publish” in Power BI is what we use to close
Power Query and return to main application (Excel or Power BI).
How to activate Power

Query?
The process for activating or launching Power Query is slightly different in Excel vs. Power BI. Refer to below
steps to launch Power Query.
Launching Power Query from Excel
1. Goto Data ribbon in Excel
2. Use buttons in “Get & transform data” area to make a new connection.
3. Or click on buttons in “Queries & Connections” area to refresh or view the existing queries.
Power Query from Power BI
1. Goto Home ribbon in Power BI
2. Use buttons in “data” area to make a new connection.
3. Or click on buttons in “Queries” area to refresh or view the existing queries.
Notes on Power Query availability

Excel: Power Query is available in all versions of Excel from 2013.
Power BI: Power Query is available in all versions of Power BI.
Power Query Tutorial - Video
I made a 1+hour tutorial on Power Query explaining every aspect of it, along with 4 full examples. Please
watch it to understand and master this powerful & time-saving technology.
You can watch it below or head over to my YouTube channel.
Power Query Tutorial - What is it, how to use it & 4 complete examples + F
Power Query as a Mind-map
Power Query is packed with thousands of features to clean, process and manage data. That is why it is tricky
to comprehend the overall picture of it. I made a mind-map of Power Query so you can get holistic view of
this life saving tool. See it below (click on the image to enlarge).
How to use Power Query?

Four Examples
In this section, I will demonstrate how to use Power Query with four full-length examples. Each example has
sample data and completed workbook for you download and follow along.
 Download Example Files
Includes sample data, completed Excel workbook & Power Query Mind-map PDF
Power Query Example 1:

Load and Clean-up Employee Data
In the first Power Query example, we will look at data for one thousand staff and clean it up. The
data is in an Excel file. We will load it to Power Query and perform below clean-up activities. After data is
clean, we will publish the dataset to Excel for analysis.
Connect to Employee Data file
Replace missing gender & department values
Remove employees without salary
Extract employee’s country and remove address column
Extract year of join
Publish data to Excel
Whenever there are new employees, we will simply refresh the Power Query connection and it will load
new data (after apply clean-up steps) automatically. Just like magic.
The below instructions show how to do this with Excel Power Query. You can apply the same steps in Power
BI too.
Step 1: Connect to the data set file from Excel
Sample file for this example - M01.xlsx ×

You need the employee data sample file - M01.xlsx for this example. In the downloaded ZIP file,
you will find it in "Datasets" folder.
Go to data ribbon and click on “From File” and select “Excel”. Point to the employee data set.
Here is a quick re-cap of how to connect to data from Power Query.
Step 2: Apply data cleansing steps in Power Query

Once the data is loaded into Power Query, you can quickly apply all the necessary data cleansing steps in
there.
The steps will be:
1. Remove top rows: The file contains 2 rows of header information which is not needed. From
“Home ribbon” in Power Query editor, using the “Remove rows” button, remove top 2 rows.
2. Promote headers: Now that our data is has no extra rows on top, let’s use row number 3 as
header. From home ribbon, just tap on the “use first row as headers” button.
3. Remove blank columns: The file also loads a few blank columns. Just use “Remove columns”
button to nix them.
4. Replace missing values – gender & department columns: Select each column with missing
data and either right click or use “replace values” button to find & replace nulls with alternative
values.
5. Remove staff with no salary: This operation is also called “Filtering”. Just use the filter button
on salary column and remove any “null” values.
I have illustrated the screen buttons for these 5 data cleansing steps on Power Query UI below. Check it out
if you need help.

Power Query Tip: Plan First, Clean Next
Save a lot of time by planning all your data cleansing steps first. Think about ways in which your data could
change in future and build your data cleansing around them.
Step 3: Extracting country from address to new column

So far, all our data cleaning steps are in-place. But now, we must add a new column with the country of
employee. You can use “Add column” ribbon of Power Query to do such operations.
For example, to extract “USA” from the address “1 Infinite Loop, Los Angels, CA, USA“, we can use text
after delimiter option.
To extract the country, select the address column and use Add Column > Extract > Text After Delimiter
option.
Note: In the video, I use a more advanced version of this as our addresses are not so straight forward.
You can use similar approach to add “year” from date of join.
Step 4: Publish data to Excel for analysis & reporting

Once your data is clean and ready, click on “Close & load” button in home ribbon. This will load data to Excel
as a table. You can use this table for data analysis or reports.
How to refresh:
Whenever there is new data added to the employee data file, just head over to the Excel file with connection
and refresh it (shortcut: Ctrl+Alt+F5 will refresh all connections)
Your file, associated analysis and charts will all be updated.
Power Query Save & Load options – Explained

In Excel: You can load Power Query data in three ways – as a table on spreadsheet, a
table to data model or connection only.

Power BI Save & Load: With in Power BI, you can either load a Power Query table or
leave it in the query editor. If you do not load a table, you can still have it refreshable
for calculation purposes.
for more on this example…

Please refer to the Power Query tutorial video above, timestamp 24:10 onwards.

Scraping Web Data & Reshaping it
In this example, let’s use Power Query to scrape web data from List of Indian States page on Wikipedia.
On that page, there is a historical census data table (depicted below) and we will connect to it from Power
Query. Once we have the data, we will unpivot it to tabular format for easy analysis.
Data for this example - Wikipedia ×

Please use the URL -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_in_India_by_past_population for this
example.
Step 1: Connect to web data source

From Data ribbon, use the “from web” button. Paste below URL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_in_India_by_past_population
and connect.
Power Query will show all the tables on the web page. Select the census table and click on “transform”
button.
Step 2: removing unnecessary rows

The wikipedia table has an extra header row and a grand total row. Just remove these with “Remove Rows”
button.
Step 3: Unpivoting the data

The census data has state in one column and each census population in one column. We can turn this in to a
standard three column table – state, year, population using unpivot option.
Right click on state column
Pick “unpivot other columns” option

Done, your data is now in tabular format.
Power Query Web Connection Tips

Privacy settings: When you make a web connection, PQ will prompt you for access
type details. Most web data can be accessed anonymously. But you can also use login
access or windows credentials to authenticate requests.

Check frequently: If the source website changes their format or presentation of data,
then your Power Query connections will break. It is a good idea to check such
connections once in a while to make-sure they are working.
URL parameters: You can use “Advanced” option during connection time to set up URL
parameters or variables. This gives you flexibility to access things like page 5 of a result
set.

Please refer to the Power Query tutorial video above – timestamp 47:09 onwards
More Power Query Web Scraping Examples

FIFA worldcup – scores, tables & details – web scraping with Power Query
[Beginner]
URL parameter example – weather data to Excel [Beginner]

Using API to access and export video comments from YouTube with Power
Query [Advanced]

Combine data from all files in a folder
You can use “folder” connection option in Power Query to easily consolidate data from all files in a folder.
In the third example, we will take all the project files in the example dataset and combine data to one table.
This process is a bit clumsy to explain in text alone. So please watch the video segment (timestamp 58:48)
to understand this fully. I am providing a summary of the folder combine technique below.
Data for this example - CSV folder ×

In the download ZIP file, use the Datasets > CSV folder as data source for this example.
1. Start by making a folder connection (Data ribbon > Get Data > From File > From Folder)
2. Point to the folder where your files reside

3. Click on “Combine” button for a simple and quick data combine.
4. Or choose “Combine & Transform” option for customizing the transformation process.
5. Power Query will show one of the files and asks you how you want to extract data. Based on
your selection, PQ will apply the same logic to all files and combines the data for you.
Here is a quick overview of the folder connection process.


Please refer to the Power Query tutorial video above – timestamp 1:09:08 onwards

Joining and Appending Tables
In the last example of Power Query, we will learn how to merge and append tables. These are similar to
SQL operations.
Power Query Merge = SQL Join

Append = SQL Union
Data for this example - Students dataset ×

In the download ZIP file, use the "students & courses.xlsx" file for this example.
Appending two tables with Power Query:

To append one table at the end of another table, you must have same columns in both tables. It doesn’t
matter if the columns are not in the same order (for ex. table 1 can have student, course and table 2 can
have course, student. PQ will append ok).
What if one table has more or less columns?
In that case, Power Query will still merge, by including all columns. The missing values will be shown as null
in the final appended table.
To append two tables:
Select either table and view in the preview grid.
Go to Home ribbon > click on “append queries“
Follow the screen prompts and specify the second table name.
Power Query will append second table at the end of first table.
You can also use this to append more than two tables.
Merging (Joining) two tables:

In order to merge or join two tables, you nee a common value in both tables. In the below example, you can
merge:
Students & Enrollment on “Student ID“
Course & Enrollment on “Course ID“
Example of common field between tables
Students Table
Student ID
Name
Date of birth
Class
Parent 1 name
Parent 2 name
Course Table
Course ID
Course name
Instructor
Credits
Enrollment Table
Course ID
Student ID
To merge two tables:
Select the source table

Go to Home ribbon and click on “Merge queries“
Follow screen prompts and select common column (field) between both source and target
tables.
Specify the join type. Leave the default “left outer join” if you just want matching values in
target table when present. Try other kinds of join (merge) if you need.
Power Query will perform the merge and show corresponding rows of target table as a new
column.
Expand this column and your merge will be complete.
Download Power Query

Examples
Please use below button to download all Power Query examples, sample data and mind-map PDF.
 Download Example Files
Includes sample data, completed Excel workbook & Power Query Mind-map PDF
Power Query - My Top 5 Tips
Tip #1
Look before leap:

Before you create any complex queries, just jot down all the steps needed and arrange them in logical
order. Apply filters & error handling steps first, then add columns or transformations.
Tip #2
Tip #3
Tip #4
Tip #5
More..?
Power Query - Recommended

Resources
Power Query Books
I recommend the excellent Collect, combine and transform data using Power Query book by Gil
Raviv.
 Share on FB  Tweet this  Post to LinkedIn
Power Query Courses
If you want a comprehensive and hands-on data analysis course with plenty of Power Query examples,
check out my Excel School online classes.
Welcome to Chandoo.org
Thank you so much for visiting. My aim is to make you awesome in Excel & Power BI. I do this by sharing
videos, tips, examples and downloads on this website. There are more than 1,000 pages with all things Excel,
Power BI, Dashboards & VBA here. Go ahead and spend few minutes to be AWESOME.
Read my story • FREE Excel tips book
 24 Comments
 Ask a question or say something...
Tagged under append tables, consolidation, downloads, merge tables, no ads, power query, solo, videos,
 web scraping
 Category: Power Query

Power Query Web Sites
These are my absolute favorite helpful websites that frequently write about Power Query. Please
 bookmark
PREVIOUS and enjoy.
Project Plan – Gantt Chart with drill-down capability [Templates]
NEXT
Excel formula to convert calendar format to table 
Excel Guru blog by Ken Puls – For Power Query tips, practical scenarios and guidance.
24 Responses to “Power
Cross Join blog Query
> PowerTutorial – What
Query pages is it,
by Chris How
Webb – forto use, Fulltoexamples,
intermediate advanced PQTips
& Tricks” applications.
M language primer (multi-part series) for advanced users by Ben Gribado
1. RonPower
MVP (2012-2018)
Query best says:
practices [Microsoft Docs]
August 27, 2020 at 12:28 am
Tutorial looks good, I'll be passing a link to it on to other users.

.
The MindMap is a great idea. But the link to a larger image does not appear to be working.
. More PQ examples on Chandoo.org
What app did you use to create it?
Check out below examples for more on Power Query.

Reply
Leave
Chandoo
analysis
says:
with Power Query
August 27, 2020 at 2:32 am
Folder consolidation – advanced example
Thank you Ron. I am glad you liked this and will be sharing the link with others
Oddly shaped data to table – with Power Query
I used
Moremindmup online
on Power Queryservice to create this. I fixed the image link, it should expand now.
Reply
2. Ron MVP (2012-2018) says:

August 27, 2020 at 2:40 am
I finally found a workaround to look at a larger image of the MindMap.

Handy tool, consistent with your article ... but ...
PERSONALLY, I think it would be much more useful if you created a version that excludes the Examples
information. The rest would make a useful map to PQ in general, without the distraction of the examples.
It would also allow you to make the MindMap more compact.
.
Your Tip#2, it would be helpful if you provided either introductory instructions on Profiling or a link to a
detailed article on using the profile feature.
.
I am trying to follow the steps in Example 4 without watching the video. I took a very different path. I
opened the example file and tried to create the example.
I've recreated the example diagram for the table organization in Example 4 in PowerPivot diagram view:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Am8lVyUzjKfppCGnREimjqw2u838?e=FKgDTm
Reply
Chandoo says:
September 2, 2020 at 2:15 am
Good suggestions Ron. I have included a snapshot of how column profiles look to the article. I will
revise the mind-map when I release another update to this page. Thanks also for sharing the
image of relationship diagram.
Reply
3. abhay says:
August 30, 2020 at 9:14 am
i am getting error in mutual fund tracker file in excel2016

[Expression.error] The Csv.Document paramter 'Columns' is invalid.
I tried by removing column and query style from query but still it is not helpful
pl suggest
Reply
Chandoo says:
Please try again... could be an issue with the website.
Reply
4. Saurav Agrawal says:

Hi Chandoo,
Is it possible to use a data model created in one workbook to use in another workbook?
Reply
Ron MVP (2012-2018) says:

September 5, 2020 at 11:08 pm
yes Here is an example article. google is your friend ...

https://www.myexcelonline.com/blog/copy-and-paste-queries-across-workbooks-using-power-
query/
Reply
5. Payal Bhagat says:

October 1, 2020 at 9:48 am
thank you so much for this informative article. keep sharing this type of content it will really be going to
help the student.
Reply
6. Trevor Beairsto says:

November 19, 2020 at 8:56 pm
Hi Chandoo!
I love the mind map! I would like to get a large laminate board made from it, but the printer lab said the
resolution won't work to enlarge it to what I would love to have. Is it possible you might have a high
resolution version? You are a great teacher by the way. Cheers from Canada.
Reply
7. Rajesh Sinha says:

December 22, 2020 at 12:12 am
DAX is a hard nut to crack,,, since syntax are bit complicated,, and without it reports are like half cooked
eggs. In general Power Query and BI are good to use,, mind mind map is good.
Reply
8. David Goodmanson says:

April 16, 2021 at 2:28 am
Thanks Chandoo, It is great that you have offered tutorials like this, it is a fantastic way to learn PQ.
Much Appreciated,
Dave
Reply
9. Suhas says:
April 21, 2021 at 5:58 pm
hi Chandoo, hope u are doing great.
I have a question, not sure if my requirement can be doable in powerI
1. I have around 20 coloums with 60 rows of employees.

2. These 20 coloums consists of 60 employees different skills.
3. All i wanted is to combine all 20 colums data to one colum, so that i can use pivot or slicer.
4. As soon as i select the skill on slicer, the employee details have to pull up.
Reply
10. Paul Clifford-Jones says:

June 7, 2021 at 11:08 am
Many thanks for a thoughtfully produced, well structured and evenly paced video and supporting
material. Professional and approachable.
Reply
11. Margaret Seger says:

August 12, 2021 at 9:45 am
I have followed the steps to complete the Example 1 Load and Clean-up, but was not sure how to
complete the step Replace alternative values in the Gender and Department columns. Do you have to
view each record to replace the data, and how would you know which department to replace the null
with?
Reply
12. M.Shiva Kumar says:

Hi Chandoo, I am a 66 year old man and I have a rudimentary knowledge of computers. I was able to
follow your tutorial on PQ and now I am trying to do some exercises. I sincerely thank you for this
tutorial.
M.Shiva Kumar,
Mysore, India
Reply
13. Nicolas Warkotsch says:

Hi Chandoo,
thank you very much for this easy-to-understand tutorial.
I only face one problem: when I select a folder via data/new query/from file/from folder the navigator
window does not open but I am led directly to power query with no possibilities to click combine,
transform or load.
When using the other data sources (from workbook etc) everything works well. Do you or anybody else
have an idea to fix this problem?
Best regards
Reply
14. Derrick Makhoba says:

October 6, 2021 at 10:59 am
Hi Chandoo, I sincerely thank you for this tutorial.

I am trying to do some exercises.
You are the best teacher.
Thank you very much.

Derrick, South Africa
Reply
15. krishnachaithanya says:

December 17, 2021 at 12:02 am
Hi, Chandoo, Iam thanking you for this course .

your aim is to make awesome in Excel & Power BI is very good.
This course is structured in a very good manner and understandable easily .
It is very useful for aspirants like me who is going to start the career in data analysis
Thank you so much

krishnachaithanya gariki
Nellore , Andhra Pradesh
Reply
16. Rajeev Sharma says:

March 11, 2022 at 8:04 am
Great Job team... very detailed information provided by you. Thanks a lot.
Reply
17. Rubeena says:

April 15, 2022 at 10:52 am
Thank you for this tutorial.

Could you kindly answer my query.. After transforming data in the first example, I have Close and Apply
(not Close and Load) and hence do not have an excel popping up. Please advise.
Reply
18. Sarah Mossburg says:

May 3, 2022 at 5:24 pm
hi there - any advice on how to pull in the comments from individual cells when using power query to
combine data from tables in multiple sheets?
Reply
19. Shanmugam C says:

May 18, 2022 at 6:44 am
Hi Chandoo,
Thanks for your useful session, it helps to understand and learn PQ easily. i really appreciate your great
effort.
Actually i had an issue with the excel file by using FROM FILE which is downloaded from salesforce report
. unfortunately, it shows an error msg "External table is not in the expected format." while importing into
EXCEL.
I'm not sure what is an actual issue with this salesforce report file [if i tried to open it in normal way in
excel it shows this msg "the file format and extension of report report1652849835532.xls don't match
the file could be corrupted or unsafe. do you want to open it anyway?" it gets open successfully after
given "YES"]
Could you please check and provide me a valid workaround on this ?
Best regards
Shan
Reply
20. Athraa says:

September 5, 2022 at 4:06 pm
Finally I found the right place to learn the right skills for excel, many thanks Chandoo for free support
that for the whole world
For myself these steps are new for a beginner in data analysis work.
Best regards,
Reply
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09/01/23, 18:56 Power Query Tutorial - What is it, How to use, Full examples, Tips & Tricks

Power Query Tutorial – What

 Facebook  Twitter  LinkedIn

 Connect to any type of data source and fetch data

 Define process for data cleansing and transformation

 Combine datasets (table joins, appends)

 Automate data collection & management tasks (refresh etc.)

1. What is Power Query?

2. How does Power Query look?

2.1. Power Query Window - 6 Important Areas

3. How to activate Power Query?

3.1. Launching Power Query from Excel

3.2. Power Query from Power BI

4. Power Query Tutorial - Video

5. Power Query as a Mind-map

6. How to use Power Query? Four Examples

6.1. Power Query Example 1: Load and Clean-up Employee Data

6.2. Power Query Example 2: Scraping Web Data & Reshaping it

6.4. Power Query Example 4: Joining and Appending Tables

7. Download Power Query Examples

8. Power Query - My Top 5 Tips

9. Power Query - Recommended Resources

9.1. Power Query Books

9.2. Power Query Courses

9.3. Power Query Web Sites

9.4. More PQ examples on Chandoo.org

What is Power Query?

Set up connections to various data sources

Publish the finalized data to source system – Excel or Power BI

mash-up and manage your data.

How does Power Query look?

applying steps on your data.

Power Query Window - 6 Important

ribbons are transform, add column and view.

Power Query and return to main application (Excel or Power BI).

How to activate Power

steps to launch Power Query.

Launching Power Query from Excel

1. Goto Data ribbon in Excel

Power Query from Power BI

1. Goto Home ribbon in Power BI

2. Use buttons in “data” area to make a new connection.

3. Or click on buttons in “Queries” area to refresh or view the existing queries.

Notes on Power Query availability

Power BI: Power Query is available in all versions of Power BI.

Power Query Tutorial - Video

watch it to understand and master this powerful & time-saving technology.

You can watch it below or head over to my YouTube channel.

Power Query as a Mind-map

How to use Power Query?

 Download Example Files

Power Query Example 1:

clean, we will publish the dataset to Excel for analysis.

Connect to Employee Data file

Replace missing gender & department values

Remove employees without salary

Extract employee’s country and remove address column

Extract year of join