categorize free text field

[jadewind]

Hi everyone,

My data has a free text field and I hope to categorize this field to be able to analyze it. 

Currently I am developing a conditional column to do it one by one. For example if the value of the free text field contains certain keywords, then they belong to category A, if it contains some other keywords, then they belong to category B etc. I am still developing my categories as I go. I expect there will be at least 10-20 categories. There are a few thousand records in the data source. Since there can be multiple keywords that can be matched into one category, I have already had about 20 conditions in my conditiona column, and still going. 

I just wonder if there is a more efficient way to do it, eg. is it possible to develop a keyword-category table and link this table to the data source somehow, then if the free text field of a record has a keyword then it will be linked to the corresponding category?

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

[Phil_Seamark]

There are several blogs that describe using AzureML to categorise text data such as this.  But requires shelling out to AzureML & cortana?

Otherwise you can take advantage of R to perform an onthe fly categorisation over your text column.  

How much data to you have in terms of rows?

[Seiryth]

Can you link to a few of these please? im also interested in doing exactly this. 

[Phil_Seamark]

Here are a couple of links

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Community-Blog/Sentiment-Analysis-in-Power-BI/ba-p/55898

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/machinelearning/2016/06/10/power-bi-and-azure-ml-better-together...