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freelensia
Advocate II
Advocate II

How to union items from two columns of same table

I have a table with 2 columns that I want to union like this:

 

Column 1Column 2Union
apple, orange, apleapple, lemonapple, orange, lemon

 

Is there a custom formula I can write? Or do I need to make a PQ function?

Thanks for any of your ideas, @Jimmy801 @Greg_Deckler @amitchandak @parry2k @Mariusz @ImkeF 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
mahoneypat
Microsoft Employee
Microsoft Employee

You can add a custom column with this function.  Prior to this step, you can Replace Values and put a space and no value in the 2nd box to get rid of the spaces first if needed.

 

= Text.Combine(List.Distinct(Text.Split([Column1], ",") & Text.Split([Column2], ",")), ", ")

 

Pat

 





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View solution in original post

6 REPLIES 6
Anonymous
Not applicable

image.png

Simple method, but this does not give me distinct lists. Thanks though!

Anonymous
Not applicable

Sorry, I didn't read the specs right 🙂 however, starting from this result you can use functions

Text.Split

List.Distinct

and

Text.Combine

mahoneypat
Microsoft Employee
Microsoft Employee

You can add a custom column with this function.  Prior to this step, you can Replace Values and put a space and no value in the 2nd box to get rid of the spaces first if needed.

 

= Text.Combine(List.Distinct(Text.Split([Column1], ",") & Text.Split([Column2], ",")), ", ")

 

Pat

 





Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution! Kudos are also appreciated!

To learn more about Power BI, follow me on Twitter or subscribe on YouTube.


@mahoneypa HoosierBI on YouTube


Hi @mahoneypat your solution looks simple. Works. I added Text.Lower to ignore upper vs. lowercase differences. I also changed the delimiter to ", "

freelensia_0-1612426602170.png

 

 

Btw where is the duplicate of my post?

smpa01
Super User
Super User

@freelensiatry this

let
    Source = Web.BrowserContents("https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Power-Query/How-to-union-items-from-two-columns-of-same-table/m-p/1642958#M50238"),
    #"Extracted Table From Html" = Html.Table(Source, {{"Column1", "TABLE:nth-child(3) > * > TR > :nth-child(1)"}, {"Column2", "TABLE:nth-child(3) > * > TR > :nth-child(2)"}, {"Column3", "TABLE:nth-child(3) > * > TR > :nth-child(3)"}}, [RowSelector="TABLE:nth-child(3) > * > TR"]),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Extracted Table From Html",{{"Column1", type text}, {"Column2", type text}, {"Column3", type text}}),
    #"Promoted Headers" = Table.PromoteHeaders(#"Changed Type", [PromoteAllScalars=true]),
    #"Changed Type1" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Promoted Headers",{{"Column 1", type text}, {"Column 2", type text}, {"Union", type text}}),
    #"Replaced Value" = Table.ReplaceValue(#"Changed Type1","apple, orange, aple","apple,orange,apple",Replacer.ReplaceText,{"Column 1"}),
    #"Replaced Value1" = Table.ReplaceValue(#"Replaced Value","apple, lemon","apple,lemon",Replacer.ReplaceText,{"Column 2"}),
    #"Trimmed Text" = Table.TransformColumns(#"Replaced Value1",{{"Column 1", Text.Trim, type text}, {"Column 2", Text.Trim, type text}}),
    #"Added Custom2" = Table.AddColumn(#"Trimmed Text", "Custom.2", each List.Distinct(List.Combine({List.Distinct(Text.Split([Column 1],",")),List.Distinct(Text.Split([Column 2],","))}))),
    #"Extracted Values" = Table.TransformColumns(#"Added Custom2", {"Custom.2", each Text.Combine(List.Transform(_, Text.From), ","), type text})
in
    #"Extracted Values"

 

Capture.PNG

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