Good afternoon,Training hub team,
I have a project to build consolidated P&L and Balance sheet (with drill down facility) from database to Power BI.
With Mynda's advise, I now link and get files from ODBC from our company live GL, and journals.
However their format is so messy with so many columns, some are blank and some are repeated without reason. Please see a screen shot
I have attempted to clean those in Power BI and getting messier.
Now I tried to clean them in Power Query. Is that ok if I clean those file in power query, and save in excel then get data to power BI.
If their figures are updated, how can I get live data in power BI just by refreshing on power BI desktop or where should I refresh?
Thank you and kind regards,
Aye
Hi Aye,
I think there is some confusion in your understanding of Power Query, Power BI and Excel. Let me clarify; Power Query is the Get and Transform data tool that is available in both Excel and Power BI. When you get data with Power BI, you're using Power Query. It makes no difference if you use Power Query in Excel to get the data or Power Query in Power BI, since they're the same tool.
If your end destination for the data is Power BI, then you would use Power Query in Power BI, not Power Query in Excel, as there's not difference or benefit for taking this extra step.
However, if you're stuck cleaning the data then the best thing is to export it to a CSV file so you can share it here on the forum where we can help you further. I recommend you use Excel to get the data from the CSV and apply the steps you think you need, then when you get stuck, share both the CSV and Excel file here on the forum with your specific question being sure to show the desired result in a mock up in the Excel workbook, so we can see the before and after views of your data.
Mynda
Many thanks, Mynda.
I will keep you posted.
Regards,
Aye
