Add Text edit capacities to the Advance Editor

[Teefo]

Hi, we need to handle the Advance Editor Faster, f.e. when copying the series of query processes and there is a column header difference I should be able to replace all and enjoy life. I also want to highlight, note, format differently and leave some painful emojies to the following IT 😄

[Shubham_rai955]

Currently, Power BI's Advanced Editor in Power Query does not support rich text editing features such as Find & Replace, syntax highlighting, or the ability to leave comments or visual formatting like highlighting or emojis. It is a simple code editor for editing M language and lacks the advanced editing capabilities commonly found in modern code editors.​

Suggestions and Workarounds

• Many community users echo your feedback and would like features like global Find & Replace, multi-select editing, highlighting, commenting, and richer formatting support.​

• Currently, the best option is to copy your M code to a dedicated code editor such as VS Code (which supports these features), make your edits, and paste the code back into Power BI.​

• Feature requests for a more advanced editor with text manipulation and formatting options are already popular in the Power BI community.​

for now, use an external code editor for heavy text editing and continue upvoting or providing feedback so Microsoft can consider adding these capabilities to the Advanced Editor in Power Power BI.

[v-sgandrathi]

Hi @Teefo,

Just wanted to follow up and confirm that everything has been going well on this. Please let me know if there’s anything from our end.
Please feel free to reach out Microsoft fabric community forum.

[v-sgandrathi]

Hi @Teefo,

Thank you @ThomasWeppler @MFelix for your response to the query.

Has your issue been resolved?
If the response provided by the community member addressed your query, could you please confirm? It helps us ensure that the solutions provided are effective and beneficial for everyone. 

Thank you for your understanding!

[Teefo]

Hi @v-sgandrathi, thank you for your follow up, unfortunately no. by my post I meant the idea to go to MS developers. for the text-editing I can copy-paste a word file or any other text editor but I want it to be built-in feature within advanced editor. I understand that the advanced editor is a coding environment that isn't necessarily super user-friendly but it can has some Find and Replace, highlighting, tags functions etc. using // isn't effective as it will show as a hint in the query steps while I meant it to be at advanced editor body only. I hope it's clear.

[v-sgandrathi]

Hi @Teefo,

Thank you for clarifying your requirement. It’s now clear that you’re looking for Microsoft to improve the Advanced Editor with more advanced text-editing features like Find & Replace, syntax highlighting, enhanced formatting, and tagging or annotations that aren’t just step hints. Currently, the Advanced Editor has a basic interface, which can be restrictive for frequent Power Query users, so your feedback is valuable. For product enhancements, the best approach is to submit or upvote this suggestion on the Power BI Ideas site under the Transform Data (Power Query) category, where the engineering team reviews community requests. 
Fabric Ideas - Microsoft Fabric Community

Thank you.

[v-sgandrathi]

HI @Teefo,

Following up to check whether you got a chance to review the suggestion given.
Glad to help

Thank you.

[Teefo]

Thank you sir, I have posted it as a new Idea titled as "Enhance Power Query Advanced Editor with Advanced Text-Editing Features" let's hope for best

[v-sgandrathi]

Hi @Teefo,

Great one! Posting it as a new Idea was the right step. Hopefully the Fabric/Product team picks it up and we see these advanced text-editing improvements in the Power Query editor soon.

Thank you.

[ThomasWeppler]

Good feedback. It sounds like you work with Power Query

Maybe the feedback would have a higher change of being seen by the right people in that forum.

[MFelix]

Hi @Teefo ,

For the changes that you are refering currently you have an alternative that is the use of the TMDL viewer that allows you to do the replacement of text, copy queries directly and all those types of things, and add additional steps if needed like the advance editor.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/transform-model/desktop-tmdl-view

Concerning the comments part you can do it usgin the // notation before each step of your Power Query so you would get something similar to this:

let
    Source = #table(1, {{CalendarFirstDate}}),
//Define start date for the calendar
    StartDate_Rename = Table.RenameColumns(Source,{{"Column1", "StartDate"}}),
// Define end date for the calendar
EndDate = Table.AddColumn(StartDate_Rename, "EndDate", each  Date.EndOfYear(DateTime.LocalNow())),
    StarEnd_Dates_Format = Table.TransformColumnTypes(EndDate,{{"StartDate", type date}, {"EndDate", type date}}),
    Dates_List = Table.AddColumn(StarEnd_Dates_Format, "Data", each {Number.From([StartDate])..Number.From([EndDate])}),
    Dates_Expand = Table.ExpandListColumn(Dates_List, "Data")
in
   Dates_List