Split column by delimeter and return column with latest date

[troyphillips]

Hello,

I have a user submitted text field in SharePoint, called Notes, in my dataset, and I am looking to always return the latest note in any row. The Notes field is always split by a semicolon ";" delimeter, and each note always starts off with the date in format MM/DD/YYYY.

/********************************************************/
Example:

Report Name	Notes	Latest Note
Revenue by Customer	08/01/2023 - Added ITEM_ID to invoice fact table; 08/21/2023 - Sign off and validation from user;	08/21/2023 - Sign off and validation from user
Top 10 Items Sold	08/14/2023 - Kick off planning  meeting;	08/14/2023 - Kick off planning  meeting

/********************************************************/

Is this acheivable in Power Query? And it is possible for this to be scalable in the event that there are, say, 100 notes for one record? 

Will be happy to provide more info as needed! 

[troyphillips]

Hi @jbwtp , I'm not able to get that to work by adding it in as a customer step in Power Query. Mayube worth mentioning that my "Report Name" field is actually called "Title" in my dataset, would this effect the code you posted? Thanks for the help so far!

[jbwtp]

Hi @troyphillips,

The line that you need is this one:

,
#"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(PlacePreviousStepNameHere, "Automated", each List.Last(Text.Split([Notes], "
")))
in
    #"Added Custom"

Replace the closing "in YourLastStep" in your code with the above and change the PlaceYourPreviousStep tag to the actual name of the previous step and [Notes] to what is your actual field name for notes.

Cheers,

John

[jbwtp]

Hi @troyphillips, This is doable (depending on the formatting of the Notes field). In the most simplist way it can be done like this:

let
    Source = Table.FromRows(Json.Document(Binary.Decompress(Binary.FromText("lY07DoJAFEW3cjO1ho8WJlRGLYixETokZmAeZOLwhsBA4m5ciyuTSLSnu8U552aZuNJIPBCKJw5D72xDnVgJf+f5gRf64QZr7JUihTg9Xe7xEc5C82h1Sahk6eBkYSi68aSEfyXRNcNWFSQrjNJoJZ22jKqzDYaeumg+WWCIfJWJ1LYIfMSOmh6JNWrOBNtf5qzLxzfTGsmsuX6/0BC5aUULWJHnHw==", BinaryEncoding.Base64), Compression.Deflate)), let _t = ((type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true]) in type table [#"Report Name" = _t, Notes = _t, #"Latest Note" = _t]),
    #"Changed Type" = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Source,{{"Report Name", type text}, {"Notes", type text}, {"Latest Note", type text}}),
    #"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(#"Changed Type", "Automated", each List.Last(Text.Split([Notes], "
")))
in
    #"Added Custom"

Cheers,

JB