Book Image

Learn Power Query

By : Linda Foulkes, Warren Sparrow
Book Image

Learn Power Query

By: Linda Foulkes, Warren Sparrow

Overview of this book

<p>Power Query is a data connection technology that allows you to connect, combine, and refine data from multiple sources to meet your business analysis requirements. With this Power Query book, you’ll be empowered to work with a variety of data sources to create interactive reports and dashboards using Excel and Power BI. </p><p>You’ll start by learning how to access Power Query across different versions of Excel and install the Power BI engine. After you've explored Power Pivot, you’ll see why Excel users find it challenging to clean data in Power Pivot and learn how Power Query can help to tackle the problem. The book will show you how to transform data using the Query Editor and write functions in Power Query. A dedicated section will focus on functions such as IF, Index, and Modulo, and creating parameters to alter query paths in a table. You’ll also work with dashboards, get to grips with multi-dimensional reporting, and create automated reports. As you advance, you'll cover the M formula language in Power Query, delve into the basic M syntax, and write the M query language with the help of examples such as loading all library functions offline in Excel and Power BI. Finally, the book will demonstrate the difference between M and DAX and show how results are produced in M. </p><p>By the end of this book, you’ll be ready to create impressive dashboards and multi-dimensional reports in Power Query and turn data into valuable insights.</p>
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Overview of Power Pivot and Power Query
6
Section 2: Power Query Data Transformations
11
Section 3: Learning M

Summary

In this chapter, you were introduced to three very powerful tools that allow us to create data models, transform and shape data, and create stunning dashboard visualizations. You now have knowledge of what Power BI, Power Query, and Power Pivot can offer and have learned how to set up and install these apps within the Microsoft Office Excel platform, as well as for different desktop versions and releases. You have also learned about their differences and functionality across updates. To end this chapter, you learned how to locate and launch Power Query using the Get Data method.

Chapter 2, Power Pivot Basics, Inadequacies, and Data Management, focuses on the shortcomings of Power Pivot and why Power Query is the better tool to use when handling complex data in order to retrieve, extract, and reshape data. By completing this chapter, you will gain an understanding of the importance of data management and data analysis in business. We will look at examples in both Power Pivot...