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s-roberts's avatar
s-roberts
Icon for Helper I rankHelper I
4 years ago

transform excel files into power query tables

I have multiple excel files that are to be transformed into a table, to be consumed by the pbi report.


Each of the excel worksheets are setup like a input form. It's content arrives in PowerQuery spread over 10 columns and 30+ rows, per form.

Sometimes the field names are above the values (ie: Contractor), and sometimes to the left of the values (ie:Project Title). 

 

I have a list of field names that I can use to target the fields in this query.

Is there a way to read from the FieldList, and go search for that content within the above query. 

 

I currently do this over many transformation queries, and was wondering if there was an easier way. 

In my last transformation query, i have to pivot the content to arrive at the 45 columns per excelform, and running into errors. 

 

Are there custom M functions that would help?

 

 

1 Reply

  • edhans's avatar
    edhans
    Icon for Community Champion rankCommunity Champion

    You can use the List.Contains function to look at one list and see if it contains the values from another list. You can convert a column in a table to a list by simply referencing the table and column like this:
    #"Query Name or Step"[Field Name]


    I have a blog post on List.Contains here that may provide some guidance. ehansalytics
    Note that performance can suffer if you are itterating over a table and doing that for each row, but to help more I'd need to see some info.

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