Extraordinary Excel: The magic of Power Query

IT_Nurse
Mar 5, 2023
2 min read

Updated: Aug 27, 2024

Are you a user of Microsoft Excel? Have you ever spent time fiddling with a spreadsheet, trying to get your data to look "right"? Have you ever heard of Power Query? If not, you're going to want to keep reading....

When I decided to take the leap into the world of data analytics a few years ago, I discovered there was a TON to learn. From dusting off my university SQL skills to experimenting with the wide variety of visuals in Power BI, it's been quite a ride. While my favorite part of the process is definitely the client meeting where I get to wow them with their new, fun, interactive reports, there's one other piece that takes a close second: learning how to manipulate data in Power Query.

In case you haven't heard of it:

Power Query is an ETL tool created by Microsoft for data extraction, loading and transformation, and is used to retrieve data from sources, process it, and load them into one or more target systems. (Wikipedia)

Basically, it is a magical application that turns the headache of cleaning & manipulating data into something that's, dare I say it, FUN! It's especially helpful for those instances where you have a report that you pull together on a regular basis, because IT RECORDS ALL YOUR STEPS. This means you can generate the same report over and over again, using new data each time, and so long your data is always in the same format you can generate your new report with basically the click of a button.

Magical, right?

In the 3+ years I've been playing with it, most of what I've learned has come from either Microsoft Learn, YouTube videos, or blog posts. And since the best part of learning something new is sharing it with others who might find it helpful, I wanted to start a list, and figured this would be the best place to share it.

So without further ado, here are my top picks:

For beginners: