Power Query: Conditional Column Splitting
30 January 2019
Welcome to our Power Query blog. This week, I look at an example where one column contains both header and detail data.
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I have some tent data where the Tent Type column contains both header data, the tent size, and more detailed data, size and colour. I want to extract that data into two columns so that I have a size column, and a size and colour column.
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My first step is to create a query by selecting ‘From Table’ on the ‘Get & Transform’ section of the ‘Data’ tab. The ‘Create Table’ box appears so that I can check the position of my table and indicate if there are headers.
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In order to format my Price column correctly, I replace the nulls with zero (0), by right-clicking with the Price column selected and choosing the option ‘Replace Values’.
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Next, I create two conditional columns, by using the ‘Conditional Column’ option on the ‘Add Column’ tab:
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and a second:
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Since the price is zero if Tent Type holds the tent size rather than the size and colour, I can use the value of Price to determine how to populate my new columns.
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I have my two columns, and now I can complete the values in Tent Size by right-clicking and choosing to fill down.
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I can now remove the rows where Price is zero or Tent Size and Colour is null by filtering on one of these columns – I choose Tent Size and Colour.
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I filter using the ‘Text Select’ option, and choose to keep those rows which are not null.
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I can delete the column Tent Type which is now a duplicate of Tent Size and Colour, and reorder my columns:
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My tent data is now in the format that I need.
Come back next time for more ways to use Power Query!