Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Vote for your favorite vizzies from the Power BI Dataviz World Championship submissions. Vote now!

Reply
cramkumar86
Frequent Visitor

Alternate for COALESCE in Power Query

Hi,

I have a report that connects to Impala and it is super slow as it fetches close to 36 million rows. Some of the transformations do happen within Power BI and I am trying to find ways to improve the efficiency of data load.

 

Although I am not 100% sure, I have a feeling that COALESCE operator that I use to find the non-blank values between columns is inefficient, as this is performed on 36 million rows.

 

I have 6 steps created like below to achieve this. In the first 5 steps, Columns 1 to 5 are created using COALESCE operator. Once they are created, columns A to J will be removed in the last step.

 

Col1 <- col A ? col B

Col2 <- col C ? col D

Col3 <- col E ? col F

Col4 <- col G ? col H

Col5 <- col I ? col J

Remove Cols A to J.

 

Are there options to make it more efficient?

 

Regards,

Ram

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
amitchandak
Super User
Super User

@cramkumar86 , You can use replace with null and value, which will use Table.ReplaceValue

Share with Power BI Enthusiasts: Full Power BI Video (20 Hours) YouTube
Microsoft Fabric Series 60+ Videos YouTube
Microsoft Fabric Hindi End to End YouTube

View solution in original post

1 REPLY 1
amitchandak
Super User
Super User

@cramkumar86 , You can use replace with null and value, which will use Table.ReplaceValue

Share with Power BI Enthusiasts: Full Power BI Video (20 Hours) YouTube
Microsoft Fabric Series 60+ Videos YouTube
Microsoft Fabric Hindi End to End YouTube

Helpful resources

Announcements
Sticker Challenge 2026 Carousel

Join our Community Sticker Challenge 2026

If you love stickers, then you will definitely want to check out our Community Sticker Challenge!

January Power BI Update Carousel

Power BI Monthly Update - January 2026

Check out the January 2026 Power BI update to learn about new features.

FabCon Atlanta 2026 carousel

FabCon Atlanta 2026

Join us at FabCon Atlanta, March 16-20, for the ultimate Fabric, Power BI, AI and SQL community-led event. Save $200 with code FABCOMM.