Reply
nidheshtiwari
Frequent Visitor
Partially syndicated - Outbound

Extract PDF tables and append them but the column name & Structure is inconsistent

Hi,

I am trying to extract the tables from more than 100 pdf files and wish to append the tables but facing few challenges i.e.

1. One pdf files have multiple tables

2. Column names are inconsistent  for example -  Table1 (Column - Age)   Table2 (Column - Owner Age)

3. Table structure is also inconsistent i.e. some tables have 5 columns while few have 6 columns. So while extracting the data, miss the information of extra column.

 

Please share if we can resolve this via power bi.

Thanks

1 REPLY 1
Ehren
Microsoft Employee
Microsoft Employee

Syndicated - Outbound

Is the data inconsistently structured in the source files? Or is Power BI extracting the data inconsistently?

 

If the source files themselves are inconsistent, you can write some conditional cleanup logic in M to make them consistent. For example, the following logic renames the "Owner Age" column to "Age", but only if such a column exists:

 

if Table.HasColumns(myTable, {"Owner Age"}) then Table.RenameColumns(myTable, {{"Owner Age", "Age"}}) else myTable

avatar user

Helpful resources

Announcements
March PBI video - carousel

Power BI Monthly Update - March 2025

Check out the March 2025 Power BI update to learn about new features.

March2025 Carousel

Fabric Community Update - March 2025

Find out what's new and trending in the Fabric community.

Top Solution Authors (Last Month)
Top Kudoed Authors (Last Month)