Every second Tuesday in Excel, we open up our workbooks and enter data into cells. We format that data so it looks nice, then we save the workbook as a PDF. We email the PDF to our boss and go about our day.
But what if I told you there was a better way? A way where you could automate the process and save yourself hours of time?
Introducing... Power Query!
Power Query is a free add-in from Microsoft that allows you to quickly and easily connect to data sources, then shape and transform that data to meet your needs. In this post, I'll show you how to use Power Query to automate the process of creating your PDF report.
- Step 1: Connect to your data source
The first step is to connect to your data source. Power Query can connect to many different types of data sources, including Excel workbooks, CSV files, and SQL databases. For this example, we'll use an Excel workbook as our data source.
- Step 2: Select the data you want to use
Once you're connected to your data source, you'll see a list of all the available tables and columns. Simply select the tables and columns you want to use in your report.
- Step 3: Transform your data
