Can I refer to Table using String?

[smann]

Here's what I tried to do that didn't work.

Replace this:

NewTable=#"MyTable"

With this:

TableName = "MyTable"

NewTable = #TableName

Is there something I can do along these lines? Thanks!

[MarcelBeug]

As far as I know this can't be done directly.

A workaround is to create a record with the table(s) you want to reference.

This record can then be used as so called "Environment" wit function Expression.Evaluate.

Query MyTables creates a record:

= [My Table = #"My Table"]

Query in which the table is referenced:

let
    Source = "#""My Table""",
    NewTable = Expression.Evaluate(Source, MyTables)
in
    NewTable

[smann]

thanks for the reply @MarcelBeug

I didn't quite follow what you said (very new to power query and rusty on this stuff in general), but I think I got the gist. I made a function that takes a string and returns a table based on a bunch of if statements (e.g. if string="table1" then #"table1" else if string="table2" then #"table2" etc).

let me know if that's what you had in mind. it's working so far as a workaround

[MarcelBeug · Accepted solution]

What I had in mind is to create a record for all tables you want to reference.

Query MyTables:

= [My Table = #"My Table", table1 = table1, table2 = table2]

The function that returns the table based on the name of the table:

= (table as text) as table => Expression.Evaluate(table,MyTables)

But why don't you just reference the tables as table? It's quit rare to reference a table by the name of the table.,

[smann]

@MarcelBeug got it, thanks. It's a very specific situation: I want to pull in a table from a csv and use that to check values in various tables. So one of the columns from the csv is the table name. To automate it, I want to use that column to refer to my tables rather than hard-coding for each table

[MarcelBeug]

Thanks for clarifying the context. Well appreciated