Use Power Query to transform data

Use Power Query to transform data in Microsoft Excel — with three ready prompts, from the immediate task to the lasting pattern.

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3 ready prompts

Written for the moment this actually comes up.

Improve — make it easier to accept

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Before I send the transformed table to operations, make the Power Query steps transparent and…
Before I send the transformed table to operations, make the Power Query steps transparent and reviewer-friendly. Expose the key transformations at the top: canceled-row filter, unpivot, date conversion, and dedupe. Add a query parameter for the cutoff date and a small comment that explains where source files live and which columns are authoritative, so Chris in operations can reproduce it if needed.

Decide — diagnose the stuck moment

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I ran the Power Query and the resulting Clean_Transactions table has fewer rows than the raw…

My query produced fewer rows than the raw file after I added a dedupe step

I ran the Power Query and the resulting Clean_Transactions table has fewer rows than the raw export; operations will flag missing orders. I can’t tell if dedupe removed legitimate duplicates or the unpivot lost columns. What checks should I run in Power Query to locate which step removed the rows and the best way to restore the missing data quickly?

Become — change the pattern

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Every new client feed forces me to rebuild similar Power Query steps and I waste time renaming…

I keep rebuilding ETL steps in Power Query for each client feed

Every new client feed forces me to rebuild similar Power Query steps and I waste time renaming columns and redoing filters. Where should I standardize templates, parameterize sources, or change my intake process so I can reuse queries across feeds and stop rebuilding the same transformations?

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Other spreadsheet work people do in Microsoft Excel.

Every task here came from the work, not from a feature list — which is why the prompts name what you want done and never the button that does it. The tool changes; the work does not.
Copyright © LLOS.ai · 2026 — original pedagogy, voice, and design — all rights reserved.

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