Check string for values in other table

[GDemnerIMUK]

Hey guys, 

I have a list of social media posts about companies and i want to categorise which company this is. 

I have a list of all the potential companies that could be there and i want to search the subject string to see if it contains one of the values in this table. 

I then want to return the value it found. 

Is there a good way to do this? 

Thanks, 

George 

[Greg_Deckler]

Hmmm, maybe if you could somehow split out the text into a table and then use GENERATE against this table and your other table along with maybe an ADDCOLUMN or something. Sounds nasty and computational expensive in DAX.

Or are you looking for a Power Query solution?

[GDemnerIMUK]

Hey, 
Ideally looking for a solution in power query. The idea is that when these have been categorised i can then slice all the data from one slicer 🙂 

[Greg_Deckler]

Ahh, in that case, @ImkeF is your best bet!

[ImkeF · Accepted solution]

Say you have your posts in a table, then you can add a column with this formula:

List.First(List.Select(ListOfPotentialCompanies, (x) => Text.Contains([Post], x))) 

You can also paste this code into the advanced editor to see how this works:

let
    Source = Table.FromRows(Json.Document(Binary.Decompress(Binary.FromText("i45W8kjMyclX8M1MLsovzk8rUYrViVbyVMjJL0tVCMgvTy1ScPJUio0FAA==", BinaryEncoding.Base64), Compression.Deflate)), let _t = ((type text) meta [Serialized.Text = true]) in type table [Post = _t]),
    ListOfPotentialCompanies = {"Microsoft"},
    #"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(Source, "Custom", each List.First(List.Select(ListOfPotentialCompanies, (x) => Text.Contains([Post], x))))
in
    #"Added Custom" 

As you'll see, only the first value from the possible list of matches is selected, but you can omit that part of the formula if you want to retrieve all matches instead.

[Anonymous]

Hi @ImkeF ! 

I was having the exact same problem and I have tried your solution but I just can't refer "TheListofPotentialCompanies" in my M formula. 

Any idea why? Thank you so much 🙂 

[ImkeF]

This video is not particularly good, but hopefully helpful: http://community.powerbi.com/t5/Webinars-and-Video-Gallery/Power-BI-Forum-Help-How-to-integrate-M-co... 

[Anonymous]

Hi @ImkeF ! Thank you so much for your help! I've ended up creating a list with the values I want to use so I can use it within the formula.

However, I still get an error when I type: List.First(List.Select(#"Lista Assinaturas", (x) => Text.Contains([Data Base], x))))

Any idea why?

Any help would be very welcome 🙂 

Thank you!

Pedro 

[ImkeF]

Hi @Anonymous ,

could you please create a sample file and paste the download link here?

Thanks,

Imke