When working with Power Query in Excel you might want to refresh Power Queries on protected sheets. But this will not work by default. Using a macro to temporarily unprotect the sheet and protect it again will do the trick. But this requires the password being displayed in the VBA code. So please have in mind that this technique only works for scenarios where you want to prevent accidental changes with the password protection.
Posts in Category ‘Excel’
Improve File Import from SharePoint in Power BI and Power Query
When you use the UI to import files from SharePoint, you’ll end up with the Sharepoint.Files function. This function can become fairly or super slow when you use it on large SharePoint sites. This is due to the fact, that it will retrieve metadata for ALL files that lie on the site. Meaning: The root site whose URL you have to enter as the function argument. So I’ve developed a better way for File import from SharePoint.
Alternative
A faster alternative is the function SharePoint.Contents. This function will read much less metadata and that seems to make it faster. But it comes with a different navigation experience: It basically only allows to select files from one folder.
Therefore I’ve created 2 functions that overcome those limitations.
Tips to download files from webpages in Power Query and Power BI
When downloading data from the web, it’s often best to grab the data from APIs that are designed for machine-to-machine communication than from the site that’s actually visible on the screen. Not only is the download usually faster, but you also often get more additional parameters that can be very useful. In this article I’m going to show you how to retrieve the relevant URLs for downloading files from webpages (without resorting to external tools like Fiddler) and how to tweak them to your needs.
Retrieving the URL to download files from webpages
Say I want to download historical stock prices from this webpage:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/history?p=AAPL
The screen will show a link to a download: Read more
Advanced transformations on multiple columns at once in Power BI and Power Query
You can apply simple transformations to multiple columns at once in Power Query using the UI only. In this article I show how you can apply advanced transformations on multiple columns at once instead. You can also use this to use custom functions instead. And lastly for the lazyefficient fans of custom M-functions: You will get a new “TranformAllMyColumnsAtOnceHowILikeIt”-function as well 😉
Background
The Transform-tab in the query editor is sensitive to the columns you select. So if you select multiple number columns for example, some number transformations will be greyed out and are therefore not accessible:
Some symbols are greyed out
So how could I then multiply all my columns by 10 for example, as the symbol for multiplication is greyed out? Read more
Export large amount of data from Power BI desktop visuals
I’m going to show how to export data from visuals in Power BI Desktop that’s too big to be downloaded by the native functionality and therefore returns this error-message:
Export data from visuals
Check if you really need this
Although the method is fairly simple, there are simpler methods if you just need the raw data from your data model (and not the specific aggregations or measures that the visual contains): Read more
DAX CALCULATE Debugger
CALCULATE is the most powerful function in DAX, as it allows you to change the filter context under which its expression is evaluated to your hearts content. But with big number of options to choose from, often comes big frustration when the results don’t match expectations. Often this is because your syntax to modify the filter context doesn’t do what you’ve intended. Unfortunately CALCULATE only displays its result and not how it achieved it, so debugging becomes a challenge. This is where my CALCULATE Debugger measure can help out:
DAX CALCULATE Debugger
This is a measure that returns a text-value, showing the number of rows of the adjusted filter context table, the MIN and MAX value of the selected column as well as up to the first 10 values. Just place this measure beneath the CALCULATE-measure in question and try to find the error 😉