To drill down or not...

[jochendecraene]

Hi

I'm wondering what is a best practice or if my question depends on the scenario.

When importing data form a sharepointfolder I can drill down the 'content' column. Then I get a few folders and the query.

Or I can click on "[Binary] en just get the query, no folders

Is there a best practice? Or does the choice depend on the scenario? What are the advantages of disadvantages?

Jochen

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

Your journey as a Power BI Developer includes a few unfortunate but necessary milestones.  One is the urge to create your own calendar script, another one is the urge to press that button.

Unfortunate, but necessary.  Go ahead, click that button. Then evaluate what mess you created, check out what was done, then delete the entire group and implement your own "binary combine" code (via Table.AddColumn).  Never click that button again.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Thanks for the solution lbendlin offered, and i want to offer some more information for user to refer to.

hello @jochendecraene ,  if your files have different data structure, and the column names are different, in this condition, you can consider to click the Binary to open each table, but it has the disadvantage that, it can open a table once a time, therefore, the processing of data is relatively inefficient.

 if your  files have the same data structure and the column names are the same, when you drill down the content column, it can display all data in your files, this is help you transform the data more effective.

Usually files with the same structure are placed in folders, so that you can drill down by clicking on content to better process the data, you can refer to the following link to know more about it.

Connect Power Query to a whole SharePoint folder – Trainings, consultancy, tutorials

Combining Excel Files hosted on a SharePoint folder with Power BI | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Micros...

Power Query SharePoint folder connector - Power Query | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards!

Yolo Zhu

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[jochendecraene]

Thnx @lbendlin 

Can you get started with some articles, books, or courses to learn this technique?

"One is the urge to create your own calendar script" 😁

Jochen

[lbendlin]

I am planning to write a blog entry on that topic, but for now you can evaluate the auto generated code, and then apply your learnings to your own process.

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

Your journey as a Power BI Developer includes a few unfortunate but necessary milestones.  One is the urge to create your own calendar script, another one is the urge to press that button.

Unfortunate, but necessary.  Go ahead, click that button. Then evaluate what mess you created, check out what was done, then delete the entire group and implement your own "binary combine" code (via Table.AddColumn).  Never click that button again.