Power Query is an Excel feature available within the newest versions of Excel. It used to be an add-in feature called Power Query. Microsoft calls it Power Query as well as Get and Transform and it  is a business intelligence tool  that allows you to retrieve data from a variety of sources, clean it and then transform or refine the data as needed. For example, you can import a database file, parse data, split or combine columns, change data types, group data and more. You can then take that transformed data back into Excel and analyze it using your preferred methods. What makes this feature exciting is that Excel records all your steps so  the data in the file can automatically be refreshed with Excel retrieving the source data, applying the same steps and updating the file for you. This is a huge time saver and will also reduce errors.

Version: This feature is only available in Excel versions starting with Excel 2016  To see if you have this feature, simply click on the Data tab in Excel. You should see a section located at the beginning of the ribbon called Get & Transform. If you do not see this section, then you do not have the Get & Transform Data feature and will not be able to do any of the exercises in this eBook. If you have the older add-in feature called Power Query you should be able to follow along just fine. 
 

Update: This course is based upon Microsoft 365 and updates through February 2026. Depending upon your version, some of the screenshots and commands may differ.
 

• Recognize when to use the Power Query feature and how it transforms data
• Identify the different parts of Power Query
• Identify and recognize how to clean and refine data using Power Query
• Recognize different data types
• Distinguish different methods of Joining tables together
• Recognize how to combine and append tables or files