From the course: Learning Data Analytics: 1 Foundations

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Combining data with merge columns

Combining data with merge columns

From the course: Learning Data Analytics: 1 Foundations

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Combining data with merge columns

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- [Instructor] Systems store data individually, mainly for sorting purposes. For example, if first name and last name were always contained together, we could never sort by last name and then by first name. To make our data sets more readable, we typically use functions like CONCAT, or concatenate. That allows us to combine the first and last name together. In Power Query, we do this by using merge column on the fields. One of the benefits of merging the fields is that we can remove the river of white space that flows through the lines. For example, if you look between B and C, what you'll notice is that there is a space gap. All of the names end in different places and the next name starts in the same place, and this causes our reports to be less readable. OK, let's go ahead and work with these fields by merging them together. All right, I'm going to right-click and go to my header and go to Edit. OK, I'm on my sales order header here, and I also see sales order header. OK, what I…

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