Power Query Combine Files with Different Column Names - Super EASY!

Combining files with different column names in Power Query can be tricky. In this video we look at two scenarios and several ways to tackle it. Download the Power BI Desktop file here:

0:00 Introduction
0:30 Example 1 CSV file data
1:48 Get files from a folder
2:49 The problem
3:15 Perform transformation on Tables in a column
7:39 Example 2 CSV file data
9:03 The problem
9:31 Solution 1
11:42 Solution 2
12:30 Solution 3
13:07 Solution 4

[wayneedmondson]

Awesome Mynda and Phil! Thanks for demonstrating the various techniques and transformations, as well as for providing the sample files to follow along. Very helpful! Thumbs up!!

[stephengrant]

Thanks. I’ve just used this trick at work today and it’s much neater than what I would have done without your video.

[zro.tolerance]

1-year ago but this solved a problem I was having so you have a new subscriber.

[imranisshack]

This just helped me with a task I was struggling with that's has a similar dataset in this video. Thanks very much for simplifying this

[shanthirajkini]

Excellent! No words to appreciate the content and the way this is thought. Thank you so much!

[jobaute]

This is fantastic. I never knew that you can manipulate tables in columns. Brilliant. Thank you for uploading this

[Mayankpatwal]

Thank you Sir and Madam! This video is really helpful for me I was facing this problem where I have dates in column 30 dates in 30 column for all 12 months which comes in 365 dates column from 12 files of each month now this video really solved my problem

[michelleday]

This is the solution I have been looking for for months! Thank you!

[suki]

Absolutely brilliant!!! Pure Ninja!!! Thanks Phil! Thanks Mynda!

[cherianiype]

very good tip Phil.. Thanks Mynda and team. Best wishes! Cherian from Abu Dhabi

[hadipermana]

Thank you Linda for this amazing tutorial..

[ssomtom]

Fantastic. Of course it is working with many sheets of one files too.

[davidm]

Nice watching the masters about their work. Now I need to take a nap as my head is spinning from all the promotions, demotions, unpinning and coding 🤨! Quick question.... is there a best practice procedure (or have you created any resources that cover this) - also for cases where columns have different names but with the added complexity where unique identifiers don't exist on all tables to match the data? I'm thinking of a scenario where you wish to merge 3 tables. 2 of the tables can be linked through a staff code for instance, but the third table only has the staff name. In the perfect world, a lookup could be used to locate the staff id from the name. That might work in 90% of the lookups, but the other 10% may be unsearchable due to misspellings or dupes. Maybe I'm asking too much of Power Query in this instance, but I would be interested to know what techniques others use to surmount this challenge?

[ltecosta]

This saved me a LOT of work! Thanks a bunch!

[boniekwdn]

Question: isn't it faster to modify transform sample table? By faster I mean both coding it as a user and faster for PB/PQ to transform file. Can you advise?

[OmarAl]

Amazing job, Mynda! I've been following up with Phil's Power Query tips, has helped me a lot at work.

[harryp]

Good day and video! Question about the video around the 6:57 mark. The instruction removes duplicated item and date fields. Does this procedure remove data from the value field from original set of tables? It appears that value data would be lost. Thanks for the work on these!

[aryaa]

Amazing tutorial. Thank you for sharing

[MrRoughking]

Since we remove duplicates from the query - what if some of the lines in each of the files were not dupposed to be duplicate in case of transactional data (i.e. sales of one SKU in Apr-22 of 159 units appearing twice) and hence tge PQ would take that out as duplicate where it should not.

In that case - would it not be better to modify the file name and have a filter column where "month column" would be equal to the "source column (file name)"

[EstefanieFernandes]

Thank you for sharing, guys! Helped me a lot