1. Nathalia Garay Gabriel Gonzalez Housing & Residential Life
Automating your data cleaning process with Power Query in Excel
Nathalia Garay Gabriel Gonzalez Housing & Residential Life
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2. Agenda What is Power Query in Excel?
Power Query vs Analytics vs “Regular Excel”
Overview of Power Query 
Demo 1: Appending (joining) files 
Demo 2: Merging (combining) files 
When to use Power Query 
Advantages of using Power Query
Q&A 
Not, many you….See, Power Query is one of the most powerful tools you can use in Excel, unfortunately most people don’t take advantage of this tool, just because they don’t know that it exists or what it does.
You can find Power Query in the Data Ribbon under the Get and Transform section. The layout on Excel 2019 and Office 365 changed a tiny bit compared to Excel 2016, however the location is still the same under the data ribbon
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3. Power Query
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4. What is Power Query? Power Query is an ETL tool, which stands for:
1. Extract data from almost any source
3. Load (to Excel)
2. Transform with Power Query
Source: 

5. The best of all worlds “Regular Excel” UAccess Analysis Power Query
Data is always up to date
Once query is set up, new data is transformed with a click of a button  ​​
Robust, flexible and easy to use  ​
Analytics: Report only needs to be created once. Data is always up to date but analysis (report) might not be in the nicest format
Excel: everyone knows how to use it! Very robust easy but at the same time hard! If you need to transform data you need to repeat steps everytime you bring more data
Power Query: The best of both worlds. Like an Analysis in analytics, you create your report once and after that you only need to refresh the data. At the same time you Power Query equally or even more robust than Excel. It is much easier to use, however is not as flexible.
There is no best tool, there are only trade off. Do you prioritize

6. Where is Power Query? Excel 2019 & Office 365 Excel 2016
You can find Power Query in the Data Ribbon under the Get and Transform section on the Excel Ribbon. The layout on Excel 2019 and Office 365 changed a tiny bit compared to Excel 2016, however the location is still the same under the data ribbon
Excel 2016

7. Power Query UI 1. Ribbon Section 2. Data Preview 3. Query Settings
2. Data Preview
3. Query Settings

8. Appending (joining) multiple files
Demo 1
Appending (joining) multiple files
Files available at:

9. Demo Overview File #1 File #2 File #3
Source: 

10. Keep in mind
You need a folder exclusively for the files you are appending
Appending works best if source files have the same columns, however this is not required  
As you add new files to the folder, remember to refresh the query and the pivot table (optional)

11. Other appending examples
Monthly/Weekly reconciliation of P-Cards, accounts, grants, inventory, etc.
Loading information from PDF files to Excel
Running the same report of rapid changing data for events

12. an alternative to VLOOKUP
Demo 2
Merge two tables,
an alternative to VLOOKUP
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13. Demo Overview Join (merge) matching fields
Add “lookup” field to table.
No formulas required
Source: 

14. What kind of Join should I use?
Left Outer Join
Inner Join
Left Anti Join
UAccess
UAccess
UAccess
Housing
Housing
Housing
Right Outer Join
Full outer Join
Right Anti Join
UAccess
UAccess
UAccess
Housing
Housing
Housing
Full Anti Join
UAccess
Housing

15. What is a Left Outer Join Merge?
All from Housing Table, matching from UAccess Table
UAccess Table
Housing Table
STD ID
GPA
Is Joined
001
2.00 ✔
002
1.50
020
4.00
024
3.25
050
2.75
STD ID
STD Name
Is Joined
001
T. Brady ✔
002
A. Rodgers
024
T. Tebow
030
P. Manning
STD ID
STD Name
GPA
001
T. Brady
2.00
002
A. Rodgers
1.50
024
T. Tebow
4.00
030
P. Manning
null
Merged Table

16. Other merging examples
Merging data from two or more subject areas in UAccess
List of student workers (Employee) and their GPA (Student)
List of students (Student) enrolled in a class that have outstanding charges (Financial)
Think Tank usage of students living in the dorms

17. When should I use Power Query?
When you frequently make changes to the same dataset – Demo 1 
When combining two or more files – Demo 2  
When working with large datasets that you normally analyze with pivot tables or visuals
When data is pulled from remote sources
Redo picture with our own dataset

18. Advantages of using Power Query
Intuitive UI that allows easy manipulation of data as opposed to lengthy Excel formulas 
Keeps track of all changes; changes are easy to undo 
Can function like a Macro, but does not require programming knowledge
Has powerful formulas for advance data manipulation 
Easy way to unpivot data

19. Questions & Thank You! ngaray@email.arizona.edu
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