Forum Discussion

jivens's avatar
jivens
Regular Visitor
2 years ago
Solved

Merge queries not returning matches

Hi all,   I'm merging two tables in Power Query and it's not returning matches when I know there should be (my dataset is small at this stage and I can basically see the matches with the naked eye ...
Need Help
  • BA_Pete's avatar
    BA_Pete
    2 years ago

    Hi Jiv,

     

    It looks like your TableA [DD_REL] column has a double-space before each of the '#1' parts.

    Try right-clicking on the TableA[DD_REL] column header and select Replace Values. Then replace "  " (double-space) with " " (single space), then do the merge after this step. That worked for me:

    Table.ReplaceValue(PreviousStepName, "  ", " ", Replacer.ReplaceText, {"DD_REL"})

     

     

    Pete

BA_Pete's avatar
BA_Pete
Super User
2 years ago

Hi Jiv,

 

Power Query supports text strings of up to 32,766 (unicode) characters, so I don't think that's the issue.

In my experience, it's usually one of the following fixes, in rough order of likelihood:

 

-1- Refresh the result preview by going to the Home tab > Refresh Preview

-2- Trim the matching columns in both tables (Transform tab > Format > Trim)

-3- Upper- or lower-case the matching columns in both tables (Transform tab > Format > UPPERCASE or lowercase)

-4- Clean the matching columns in both tables (Transform tab > Format > Clean)

 

I've not listed matching the Data Types as the Merge dialog should give you a warning for this.

 

If none of these work, then you'll need to provide a small amount of anonymised sample data from each matching table to see if the issue can be reproduced and fixed accordingly.

 

Pete