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Recoba88's avatar
Recoba88
Helper III
9 years ago
Solved

Overwrite columns

Hi,   When I add column only in excel (the data loaded from power query) and after it I add another column in power query. The column from power query overwrites the column I added in excel.     ...
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  • MarcelBeug's avatar
    MarcelBeug
    9 years ago

    In that case you need to merge your table (with comments) and the information from Sharepoint in a query which sends it output back to your table (which serves both as input and as output).

     

    In order to do that, you need to have a key column (or a set of key columns) you can use to merge both tables.

     

    So your query structure is like:

    get table from Sharepoint

    merge with Excel table and expand (only your comment column so the comment will be added to the table from Sharepoint)

     

    And the output of this query is written to the Excel table.

     

    Edit: example of a working query how it looks like in the end.

    It requires some steps to set it up, as illustrated in the video that I linked in a previous post.
    The name of the query is ExcelTable, so the output is used as input with the next refresh.

     

    let
    Source = SharepointTable,
    TableWithComments = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="ExcelTable"]}[Content],
    #"Merged Queries" = Table.NestedJoin(Source,{"Header 1"},TableWithComments,{"Header 1"},"NewColumn",JoinKind.LeftOuter),
    #"Expanded NewColumn" = Table.ExpandTableColumn(#"Merged Queries", "NewColumn", {"Comments"}, {"Comments"})
in
    #"Expanded NewColumn"

     

     

Recoba88's avatar
Recoba88
Helper III
9 years ago

You can see the column "custom2" overwrites column "custom"

MarcelBeug's avatar
MarcelBeug
Community Champion
9 years ago

That's quite logical, as the table is output from Power Query, so if you adjust the table, than all your manual modifications will be lost once the query is refreshed.

 

You can prevent that to adjust the Source of your query to be that same table (instead of the original source), meaning that the input for the query will be the same table as the output.

 

However, you can't add further columns to the table, as these will be added each time the query is refreshed, resulting in an error as the column already exist.

 

Maybe you can explain further what you actually want to achieve, what is your scenario? It is already strange that your original table originates from Power Query. Typically you would have an Excel table (or an external source) as input for Power Query.

 

I can understand if you have an external data source with updates you want to add to your table with manual added comments, but that would be additional rows (as illustrated in the video I linked previously) and not additional columns.