How to compare two columns and return data from a third column?

[Anonymous]

Hi Community,

Example data set in Power Query

Hours	Project Catagory	Production Catagory	Internal (formula)	External (formula)
3	Men's	Men's	3	null
5	Women's	Women's	5	null
6	Kid's	Kid's	6	null
2	Men's	Family	null	2
4	Family	Men's	null	4
1	Women's	Women's	1	null

What I need to do

To compare the values between the "Project Category" and the "Production Category".

If it's a match, get the value from the "Hours" column and put it in the "Internal" column. If not, put the hours into the "External" column.

The question

Is there a Power Query formula or function that can do this? Maybe I could work out the "Internal" column and apply the same method to the "External" column?

Many thanks!

[v-yalanwu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi, @Anonymous ;

You could add conditional column as follow:

Then add another conditional column.

The final show:

let
    Source = Table.FromRows(Json.Document(Binary.Decompress(Binary.FromText("i45WMlbSUfJNzYspNTAwMi9G5cTqRCuZAoXC83ORVaBwQWrMgILemSkIFUgckLwRuh1uibmZOZVgORMEF8NuQ0J2xwIA", BinaryEncoding.Base64), Compression.Deflate)), let _t = ((type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true]) in type table [Hours = _t, #"Project Catagory" = _t, #"Production Catagory" = _t]),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Source,{{"Hours", Int64.Type}, {"Project Catagory", type text}, {"Production Catagory", type text}}),
    #"Added Conditional Column" = Table.AddColumn(#"Changed Type", "Internal", each if [Project Catagory] = [Production Catagory] then [Hours] else null),
    #"Added Conditional Column1" = Table.AddColumn(#"Added Conditional Column", "External", each if [Project Catagory] <> [Production Catagory] then [Hours] else null)
in
    #"Added Conditional Column1"

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Yalan Wu
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[HotChilli]

It's fairly straightforward.  Add a custom column using :

if   then  else      

You just use the names of the columns to compare the 2 columns required and put the desired result and an alternative

--

So you'll need to 2 custom columns