Pass a list as filter argument in Power Query

Hello,

The initial solution does work. Here are some details to make it work.

In Power Query, you must load a table containing your facts (lots of rows) and an other table containing the filter criterias (a few rows). Your Filter table must be converted to a List. The filter table will contain only one column, right-click on the column header and select Drill Down: the filter table is now a List.

List.Contains already includes the notion of "any". The function will go through each row in the fact table (in a specified field) and look for any of the values listed in the Filter List.

List.ContainsAny must be used to compare two lists, not a applicable for the example listed above.

Here is an example using BOTH functions:

My Fact Table named CRM contains 3 fields: Client, Date, Message

My Filter Table named Filter contained 1 field with 2 entries: "waiting" and "pending".

The Filter Table was drilled down to become a List.

The Message field contains different entries such as 

- waiting

- pending

- waiting for call back

- resolved

You must select New Source > Blank Query and type the following: 

SCENARIO 1

= Table.SelectRows(CRM, each List.Contains(Filter, [Message]))

The resulting table will contain all 3 fields from CRM table, and only the rows where the Message value is an exact match (this is case-sensitive) to either :

"waiting"

OR

"pending"

SCENARIO 2

If I want my filter to look into any of the words listed in a Message, I can transform each entry under Message into a "list" with Text.Split function. I will use " " (space) as a delimiter, therefore a Message value like "waiting for call back" will become a list of those 4 words.

= Table.SelectRows(CRM, each List.ContainsAny(Filter,Text.Split([Message]," ")))

The resulting table will contain all 3 fields from CRM table, and only the rows where the Message value contains either "waiting" or  "pending" :

"waiting"

"pending"

"waiting for call back"

Julie at Daxel.ca, offering training in Ottawa, Canada

Drew248 

This dont work - Because people have imported their table as a table and not as a list.

if you "table" do not have a "list" icon.. it wont work.

so the "list" of parameterse is a table when you import it - but you can easy chang this

1. click the table you want to use a list
2. click Transform tab (next to home)
3. select convert to list

NOW you can use it  as a list

= Table.SelectRows(#"Omdøbte kolonner", each List.Contains(Tabel4,[Vejesag]))

Hey I wanted to let everyone in here know that performed an efficiency test on utilizing the list as filter argument vs simply just using the filter drop down.  My filter list was about 13 - 20 out of probably 100 total unique field values to compare against.  It took significantly longer to refresh the dataset when I utilized the filter list versus the simple drop down filter in query editor.  (10 seconds using the simple method; 59 seconds using the filter list).

Does anyone have any thoughts here?  It is clearly a lot easier and cleaner to use that list as the filter argument, but in my situation it significantly increased the refresh time.  Is it possible that I am doing something wrong?  Any comments greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nick

Just wondering why you wouldn't use an Inner Join to accomplish this? That seems like the simple way to do it. Do the Inner Join and then delete the column representing the "second list" (which you would convert to a table, either natively in the sheet where it lives or as a quick operation in PQ to convert list to table prior to the join).