Power Query is an ETL tool, that can be used to extract, transform and refine data.
Here ETL stands for Extract, Transform & Load.
E :- It can extract data from 30+ data sources and convert into a consolidated data format for processing/transformation
T :- This step process the data like cleaning, Splitting a column into two or multiple column, find and replacing, appending and merging two data tables, aggregating & summarising data, pivot or un-pivoting columns, transposing rows and columns etc.
L :- And finally it loads the data to an excel table or to a data model or simple creates a connection (The connection can be used to create Pivot).
Some facts about Power Query
- It is Microsoft excel based free add-in. Download.
- It is backward compatibe. The Add-in available for excel 2010 & 2013. It is integrated into excel in MS Excel 2016 and know as Get & Transform.
- It is available for both 32 & 64 bit excel.
- Learning & mastering power query is much faster than learning Excel formulas and VBA.
- It can be used to automate some task.
Who should learn/use Power Query?
- Those who spend much of their time in combining data from multiple files
- Those who work in large volumes of data.
- Those who work in data from multiple sources.