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trailmax
Frequent Visitor

Better text editor for M?

I find myself a lot doing modifications to daatasets via Advanced Editor and using M-Language a lot. 

However, Advanced Editor in Desktop client is somewhat lacking. My background is software developer, so I'm used to code editors that give my syntax highlighting and intellisence (Visual Studio)

 

Are there any third party editors available for M that will give me a better environment for coding?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
itchyeyeballs
Impactful Individual
Impactful Individual

DOn't think there is anything "out of the box" but this might help:

 

https://ssbi-blog.de/technical-topics-english/power-query-editor-using-notepad/

 

 

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6 REPLIES 6
freelensia
Advocate II
Advocate II

I use Sublime Text with SQL Syntax. It is decent.

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Bsacheri
Frequent Visitor

Intellisense, syntax highlighting, and line numbers are available in the September 2018 release of Power BI.  To try out this new feature, you need to enable it under the Preview features tab in the Options dialog.  Follow the link below and watch the video.  

 

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-desktop-september-2018-feature-summary/#m

 

 

Advanced Editor with Intellisense

 

 

In the comments on that page Miguel Llopis"...Glad that you find M Intellisense useful. We'll definitely enable this feature in Excel Power Query, once the feature hits GA."

 

Until this is available in Excel, I'll be using Notepad++ with an M language highlighter.   

itchyeyeballs
Impactful Individual
Impactful Individual

DOn't think there is anything "out of the box" but this might help:

 

https://ssbi-blog.de/technical-topics-english/power-query-editor-using-notepad/

 

 

@itchyeyeballs That's a good start! Thanks!

I've also found an extension for Visual Studio Code https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sea1jxr.powerquerymlanguage

 

I'll play with both of them and will report back.

Anonymous
Not applicable

I have used both and I have them useful as a scratch pad to quickly make changes to M code however as they are not connected to any other queries you have in Power BI it is of limited use. I personally prefer the VS code option but that is mostly because I prefer VS code to Notepad++

@Anonymous Exactly the same sentiment here. Lack of connection to the PowerBI is limiting, but a quick way visually sepearating commands from variables/expressions is good. Also some intellisense in VSCode is a great way to explore

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