Combine Data from Multiple Excel Files with Inconsistent Column Names
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- čas přidán 5. 07. 2024
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In this video, we will learn how we can combine data from multiple excel files which contain different column names. We will also learn how to create a mapping table & plug that as the rename the inconsistent column names!
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===== CHAPTERS =====
0:00 Intro
0:20 Explanation of the Problem & Data
1:27 Understanding the Logic
3:55 Getting all the Column Names
8:01 Creating the Mapping Table in Excel
9:28 Combining the Data & plugging in the Mapped Table
15:47 Testing the Query
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I don't understand why this channel isn't bigger, seeing that the solutions he gives is by far explained in such a way that most people understand. Keep up the good work Sir.
Glad you think so!
Very true, I learnt about this channel few weeks back only. Great!!
absolutely true, i too believe this.
I can't agree more!! Great work delivered seamlessly
I agree. Goodly is Godly in what is he doing. Helped me many, many times
I am sure this is helpful to the excel experts. As a layman, I wanted step by step solution. Like starting right with the mapping tables. Everything was already created earlier, so i could not understand anything.
Wanted to let you know this proved useful to me. My case was far more complex and I had to debug somethings...but it worked! Saves me like 90 minutes of work.
This was an EXCELLENT tutorial, thank you so much.
Hey Chandeep, thanks for the really good videos. It's really fun to listen to you and above all you explain everything really well. Keep up the good work!
You are a MASTER of excel. Glad that I found your channel and is really informative/educational and highly useful.
This channel deserves a millions of subscribers 🎉❤😊
This is soo amazingly helpful! Thank you!
This rocks! Thank you for a great explanation on this topic!
Thank you so much! Easy and effective solution .
You're a lifesaver, I'm just getting started into Query logic and your channel has been tremendously helpful!
Thank you for this tutorial...it's the perfect solution to the issue we are having with 100+ columns.
wonderful really, I had a tough time playing around inconsistent columns. A big thankyou 🙂
Thank you very much. I was working on such exercise since last 2 weeks and struggle a lot , referred many You tube videos but.... Hats up to you dear ...which helped to proceed further ..Very well explained ....
This was great as always. I have been doing this another way without Table.Combine and List function.I need to wrap my head around Table.Combine and List as this would make it more dynamic.
This video is really GREAT. Thank you Chandeep for your outstanding way to explain the solutions.
Thank you Chandeep. This is a common challenge faced while working with different data sets.
Been looking for this recently!
Saved my life! 🎉
Glad I could help!
I will add this to my favorites. I have seen many techniques to combine inconsistent column names. I like this one. The list accumulate method I do not understand or at least can't remember each time I need it. But this method is memorable.
Loved it ! A very smart solution to a very common issue.
Glad you love it !
Your videos are brilliant and you're so inspirational. You make it easy to understand the logic and then the code to apply the logic. This video has really helped me and I'd like to say a big THANK YOU !
Glad you like it!
Agree, Outstanding. NOTE: The Sales Data folder in the Zip file has two temporary files - names starting with ~ that are hidden and causing an error in the M Code. Just delete them to fix it. Also, change the folder path in the FolderLocation query, not the Data Source.
Excellent video. I don’t think I could manage to replicate this but I found it a useful example of using PQ for wrangling data.
Excellent video Chandeep! Thank you very much!
Glad you like it!
Woow. You coverd every thing 😊 by easiest way
A godly solution to a problem i have been facing for so long....Super.
Glad it helped
Omgggggggg you just saved my life. Thank you SO much ❤❤❤
Excellent video. Thank you m8.
Very impressive. YOu have an incredibly deep understanding of the data structure
Thank you!
Thank you, I really needed this solution! :)
Glad it was useful!
Simply Gold Content as always.
Thank you 😊
Brilliant stuff- the best M channel 👌
Thank you !
Very helpful video. Simple solution for a very common issue. Thank you very much for your effort to teach us.
Glad it helped
Another awesome lesson! Thanks for providing the sample files too. Thumbs up!!
My pleasure!
Thanks a lot ! It’s very helpful ❤
Glad it was helpful!
Really the videos that you post would be very helpful to those who works in the corporate world especially who into data and makes their job much easier. Thanks for your efforts and wish your dreams come true and achieve heights.
Thank you for your inspiring words!
Hi, thank you for such a clear explanation. I hope you can help, not many people talk about this, but can we load each table as a separate data table? Or is it possible to horizontally combine all the tables if the date column is the same in all tables loaded here?
Life Saver Video!
Nice , I m being a regular viewer of your channel. keep the good work.
Thanks, Keep watching!
Your vedios r very very good I basic learner will watch all one by one
Wow that was hard work!! I used this on a folder full of csv files!! I followed you step by step and....it worked...OMG How do you know this stuff!! i would have never figured this out! thantks
I have the same issue but doesn’t work because of the excel workbook function on csv files. Did you change the code? Thanks
Another great video. We have all faced this issue sometime in our data combine journey. Thanks for laying it out so clearly. I would like to request you to create a video on setting up incremental refresh for files in sharepoint folder in Power BI. I have seen some solutions online but have never been able to get them to work. Thanks again!
Great video! You save my day with this awesome tutorial 😁😁
Glad you like this Alvaro!
Good solution, I like it
What I can point out as improvement is the stability issue that you pointed out at 16:47
Indeed, you need to redo all of that because the table will store records which are not absolute, but some kind of position oriented based on content of the query behind it. I would say this is generally not a good practice to combine query generated table and manual input. Imagine you have multiple tables like that - it is extremely hard to control and spot the difference between them as at least they would be of the same color.
My solution to such stability issues:
1. load the query table, but remain it intact - do not add anything to it manually
2. create another table manually and use different color theme (blue for example) so it is different from the query format
3. name this table and its columns absolutely same way and copy the query table content to your manual table - at this point you will have two tables which will be identical for its content
4. create data validation in manual table columns referring to the query table columns as a dynamic range using =INDIRECT("Table1[Column1]") string - you need to do it column by column
5. extend the manual table with new columns that you need - "rename" column in your example
6. add the controls through LEFT and RIGHT OUTER joins between the original query table and manual blue table to check the consistency - i.e., that you did not forget to include all of the entries to your manual table. Outcome of joins can be count or non-blank count that produces outcome of a check table with a single cell
7. merge the manual table with other query tables inside the query editor to achieve your goal
Yes, it is much more than shown but it gives your control and automated ways to check the correctness of a process
That's critical for a repeated exercise
Thanks again!
Good solution! I was also going to suggest a use of a manual table but didn't think of the data validation idea. Perhaps, your Step 6 can be an "exception" list which would display any items not present in the manual table so that it is clear what item(s) need to be added. Maybe with a dynamic array like this:
=FILTER( OrigTbl[Column], ISERROR( XMATCH( OrigTbl[Column], ManualTbl[Column] ) ), "Mapping is complete" )
Excellent presentation. Thanks
I am a very big fan of this channel. Your teaching skill very good that even newbies can easily understand. Thank you very much for this trick.
Thank you for the inspiring words!
This video is gold. ❤
Thank you so much, this was very helpful
Glad it was helpful!
Very good content and very useful.Thank very much
Glad it was useful!
Thanks a lot! Very well understandable :)
Glad you like it!
i have watched alot videos and you are the best
Really well explanation.. Just subscribed...
Welcome aboard!
One of the best explanations
Thanks!
I'm going to try this in my next assignment! Thank you! For the potential risk of wrongly aligned mapping table after a new file with new headers getting added, I wonder if a better way of doing it is to create a mapping table to be left joined to the dynamic column header table? It will still shows empty if a new table with new header gets added, but at least it won't map to the wrong thing after refreshed.
one of the best tutorial keep on sharing
Glad you liked it!
thanks tutorial and simple file
to step by step
thank you very much
It is so clever to transpose and convert to list of lists! :)
Amazing Work.
Good lesson!
Superb ! Keep it up !
this is amazing.. Thank You!
Welcome Waleed!
Hi, thanks for your video, I was wondering if this method could be applied to combine csv files instead excel files.
This is really good .. got lot to learn
Million Thanks
I have applied the learning from this video to the task that I need completing and it works a treat, thank you Chandeep.
One quick question. I have no problem doing this when I use Power Query in Excel. How do I do the same when I use Power Query from within Power BI please?
Specifically, how do I load the "mapping" list from Power BI into Excel, so I can generate the "rename" column before loading the table back from Excel into Power BI to generate the "Renames" query?
Thanks
very useful thanks!
Glad it was useful!
Amazing and very useful video. Thnx sir
Glad it was useful!
Excellent solution to a recurring problem. Greetings from Chile
Thank you!
Very well explianed.
Thanks a lot, the video helped
Glad it helped Abdul !
This video is super helpful as are all the videos. I've learned so much from this channel. Question I have, in this video you create a custom column to create a table so we can see all the sheets within a file. Is it possible to filter to a particular sheet at this step BEFORE expanding the custom column? I have multiple excel files and each has mutliple sheets. One sheet on each file is over 600,000 rows, and I'd like to avoid loading that sheet when i click expand.Is this possible to do?
Many thanks Chandeep,
For mapping list of lists:
It will be better to use Table.ToRows only
Instead of
table.Transpose + Table.ToColumns
Regards
Mohammed from Algeria.
Thanks for this video, Chandeep. Congrats!!
Brilliant!!!
Thanks!
Hi there, thank you for this! What if the Excel sheets/files have different numbers of columns, which of course will have names not common to the other data sources/files?
excellently executed (MASTER)
As usual great 👍
Thanks !
Very good, it’s a tricky method! I try it with csv files and it failed because of the excel workbook function. I’ll look for on my own but maybe you’ve already solved this problem. Thanks
wow, generating a list of all distinct column names for mapping is really genius. I also noticed that you faced the same problem of power query inserting rows in partial columns when query is refreshed which messes up the table. I got around this problem by using only VBA to refresh and disabling Explicit refresh. I don't think Microsoft is ever going to fix that.
awesome, thanks for sharing
Glad you like this!
Excellent. Very useful
Thank you!
This guy blows my mind every time
Thank You!
Great solution Chandeep 👌 Could you please show solution for xls (not xlsx) files ? Looking for ways to automated conversion to xlsx or way to combine and use xls :)
Thank you for another great view. i am struggling to keep source file name in the final output. is that possible to do ...could you please help
This guy is pure genius undiluted
Really helpful❤️
Thanks!
Thank you 💗
You’re welcome !
Excellent content 😊
Thanks!
Superb!. Par Excellence.
Thank you!
This is super and is of big help!! Thank you!!
Just wanted to know can we add the files names column at the end as sometimes we have to collate the data of different region, months, companies which will be very difficult to segregate without classifying.
im trying to do this rn, did you find how?
Thanks bro. Good video.
Glad you like it!
wow, love it
Amazing 😍
Very good and very useful trick Chandeep! Thank you very much.
I found that if we hardcode the rename values in a custom column with "ifs" and "List.AnyTrue", we can skip the manual rename each time the sources change.
Even better, we can create a function for renaming, and use it and update it as needed 🤷♂️
The thing is, the rename with 6-10 columns is very easy, but 30 and more.. uff 😥
Idk, there must be a better way.. Idk
Thanks for sharing ❤
Thanks for watching!
Thank you Chandeep for this lovely video. Is there a way you can share a link to the video (if you have made) where we do merge different tables from sharepoint with different headers.
Thanks sir
Bravo!!
Yaaahoo!! 😁
amazing, thanks for detailed explanation, very easy to understand each step. Can you guide when new excel is added to source folder? How can those data automatically get loaded to Combined File?
Hi. If you are getting data from folder option in PQ, it is automatic
Good video
If header names of columns are in random order, does it reorder automatically?
Genius ho bhai aap …
Thank you!