Forum Discussion
Helper IIComplex PowerQuery Merge query using substrings
A different way to perform a lookup is to use "Table.SelectRows", although this might be slower - so it is essential that you use the Table.Buffer and for very large table try to partition also. But the basic principle can look as follows:
let Table1 = Table.Buffer(#table({"Column1", "Column2"}, {{1, "4441"}, {2, "4442"}, {3, "4443"}, {4, "443"}})), Table2 = #table({"Column1", "Column2"}, {{1, "4441098"}, {2, "4441097"}, {3, "4441011"}, {4, "4441122"}, {5, "4443111"}, {6, "4443123"}}), Lookup = Table.AddColumn(Table2, "Lookup", (outer) => Table.SelectRows(Table1, each Text.StartsWith(outer[Column2], [Column2]))), #"Expanded Lookup" = Table.ExpandTableColumn(Lookup, "Lookup", {"Column2"}, {"Lookup.Column2"}) in #"Expanded Lookup"Advantage here is that you don't need an exact match, but can use all sorts of conditions, in this case "Text.StartsWith".
Community Championwell there needs to be a rule about the length of the merged characters. It is not important how long the second table are, but it is important how long the characters in the first table are. Your example suggests that there can be 3 or 4 character lenght in the first table. Assuming that is a typo, I would do this.
Load table 2
duplicate column 2
split column 2 at 4 characters
delete the remainder column
join table 1 on table 2 with the new column.
If your 3 character 443 in table is not a typo, you are in a world of trouble - unless you can identify a rule on how to split the column in table 2.
Helper IIHi Matt,
Thank you for your reply, but I'm in a world of trouble, as my 3 chars is not a typo. Even worst, I've records of 5 and 2 chars.
Regards,
GV