#PowerQuery – Convert a referenced query column to a table without Table.FromList() – Magic trick

This week I watched the video from Guy in A cube with Patrick and Alex Powers – You thought DAX? Alex shows you Dynamic M-M-Magic! – YouTube.

And one trick I noticed Alex used was something I didn’t know about Power Query and had annoyed me for a long time.

As you might have seen in my previous posts I like to make the queries as short as possible – and this tip will help me do that even better than my previous tip – How to avoid a rename step in #PowerQuery when you use Table.FromList – #PowerBI – Erik Svensen – Blog about Power BI, Power Apps, Power Query (wordpress.com)

Let’s imagine I have a query with a column called Reportid – and I want to create another query with the unique values from the column.

Normally I would create a new blank query and than reference the column with – queryName[ColumnName]

And then we have a new query that contains a list.

I want a table, so I use the “To Table” in the ribbon or the shortcut menu

Click Ok in the dialog

And a new step is added and I end up with a table

THE TRICK –

Instead use double square brackets and you will not only get a table, but the column name is also as I want it. – Query[[ColumnName]]

That is awesome – hope you find it useful too

Happy Querying!!!