import specific colums from excel

[omerk]

hi,

i would like to import specific colums from an excel file into the power bi.

the reason is the excel file keeps on changing and sometimes colums are missing, so i can't just refresh the date source from the power bi cause i get an error saying some colum is mising. 

thaks

[MattAllington · Accepted solution]

I assume if you select the columns you want to keep and then select "remove other columns", this should work for you. It shouldn't matter what the other columns are.   So if some are missing, it will still work. But if one of the columns you want to keep is missing, then it will fail

[namit2205]

I am facing a similar problem, basically what I want to do is that I want to write a code to dynamically populate data into a blank table from an excel file. Say my excel file presently has 50 columns and I only want to select 15 out of them, but I want to do this at the time of data import and not using query editor.
Kindly Help.

[omerk]

Hi,

thanks for the response' unfortunately it is not true. if i remove the columns that i don't want (with the power bi query editor) and then the columns are deleted from the excel spreedsheet it will give me an error massage.

any suggestions?

[MattAllington]

Did you use "remove other Colums" as I suggested?  Assuming there is a defined set of columns that are always there, select these columns and then use the menu "remove other columns".