Forum Discussion

sperry's avatar
sperry
Resolver I
8 years ago
Solved

Encode a Text field

Hi - I have a government issued unique identifer (called NHI in New Zealand). Its in the format ABC1234.

 

I have a data set that I would like to pseudonymise using a formula in query editor as I would like to remove the original NHI column so it is not visible to users.

 

I have tried using the text coding functions in power query but all return an error.

 

I have also tried creating a table of unique NHI values using the summarize function and creating a an index number using rankx but if I do this I cannot remove the NHI column.

 

Any suggestions??

  • You can create a lookup-table in the query editor where you do the things that you tried to achieve in DAX:

     

    - reference your original table and select just the NHI-column

    - remove duplicates

    - add index column

     

    That's your lookup-table now. Create a NEW query (!) where you reference your original table, merge with the new lookup-table on NHI, expand the index (your new key) and remove the NHI-column. Disable load to datamodel for your original table.

1 Reply

  • ImkeF's avatar
    ImkeF
    Community Champion

    You can create a lookup-table in the query editor where you do the things that you tried to achieve in DAX:

     

    - reference your original table and select just the NHI-column

    - remove duplicates

    - add index column

     

    That's your lookup-table now. Create a NEW query (!) where you reference your original table, merge with the new lookup-table on NHI, expand the index (your new key) and remove the NHI-column. Disable load to datamodel for your original table.