Power Query: Power Query Online – Part 7

Welcome to our Power Query blog.  Today, I merge queries in Power Query Online.

In the current series, I am looking at Power Query Online, which I have accessed from Power Apps:

Last week, I looked at the other resources available on the ‘Help’ tab:

This week, I’m going to have a look at the ‘Merge Queries’ process to see how it is different to Power Query on the desktop.  I start in the Population Data query, and choose the ‘Combine’ dropdown on the Home tab:

On the ‘Merge queries’ dropdown, I can then choose to ‘Merge queries as new’:

This is actually an extra step compared with the full screen Power Query editor for desktop, but here, we can search for the command we need instead of going through the Ribbon:

However, we choose to access it, the dialog has been improved:

Not only is the second table referred to as the ‘Right table for merge’, but instead of describing the ‘Join kind’ verbally, the different types are represented visually which I think makes it easier to follow.

When we select a second table, and choose an equal number of columns on each table, the dialog makes it clear that the matches are based on the previewed rows and are therefore an estimate as the calculation takes place:

The number of matches is then returned:

When I click OK, I can see an icon which is new to Power Query Online:

The Source step is given a connection icon, and when I hover over the step, I can see more information about the queries that have been merged.  The bottom icon with the description ‘This step will be evaluated outside the data source’, is a query folding indicator, which in this case means that the source step cannot be folded.  For more information on query folding see Power Query: Folding Table.

As I would in Power Query desktop, I have a column of tables which I can expand:

When I click on the expand icon, the dialog is a little different to the standard Power Query desktop version.

In the Power Query Online version on the left, I no longer have the ability to sort the columns in alphabetical order or to Aggregate the data in the merged table.  When I click OK, the step ‘Expanded Region Data’ has an Expand icon and when I hover over the step, I see information about how it was created:

That’s it for today, I will continue looking at the functionality in Power Query Online next week.

Come back next time for more ways to use Power Query!