Posts in Category ‘Excel’

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, Advanced transformations on multiple columns at once in Power BI and Power Query, Power BI, Power Query, Power BI Desktop

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 😉

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The full Table.ContainsAnywhere function for Power Query in Power BI and Excel

In a previous post I introduced the concept of a function that searches for an occurrence of a character or string within all columns of a table. Here I share the full “Table.ContainsAnywhere” – function with parameters for many useful options.

Function parameters and options

  1.  The first parameter “MyTable” refers to the table to search through
  2.  The 2nd parameter “MySearchStrings” can be either a text field or a list of strings to be searched for. The function will take care of any of these cases automatically.
  3.  If the 2nd parameter is a list and this 3rd parameter is null or not speified, the function will return true if any of the list items is found within the table. But if set to “All”, all list items have to be found somewhere in the table for the function to return true.
  4.  By default, the search will be made in a case sensitive mode (as this is the default-mode in Power Query). But any entry into the 4th function parameter will turn this to a case insensitive mode instead.
  5.  By default, the string or list entry has to match fully with any entry in the table. Again, any entry in the 5th parameter swaps that to a partial match.

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A new Table.ContainsAnywhere function for Power Query in Power BI and Excel

The native Table.Contains-function in Power Query tells you if one or more strings are included in one or more of its columns. But you have to be specific about which strings you search in which column. But what to do if you want to search a string in all of its columns instead? Use my new Table.ContainsAnywhere function.

Problem

In the native function, you have to pass in a record with search term and column name. So if you search for “blue” in column “Description”, your formula would look like so:

Table.Contains( YourTableName, [Description = "blue"] )

But that’s not what I want in this case. I want the formula to search through all columns within the table for the occurrence of “blue”.

Solution

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