Power Query: Home Tab

Power Query is a powerful data transformation and automation tool built into Microsoft Excel and Power BI. It allows users to connect to various data sources, clean and shape data, and automate workflows—all without writing complex code. The Home tab in Power Query is the central hub for managing queries, connecting to data, and configuring parameters.

That’s where Power Query shines. Its “Combine” section, located in the Home tab, offers powerful tools to merge, append, and combine queries with just a few clicks—no formulas or coding required.

Two of the most powerful sections in Power Query’s Home tab are Transform and Sort. These tools allow you to reshape, reformat, and organize your data with precision and speed—without writing a single line of code. In this guide, we’ll explore the full capabilities of the Transform and Sort sections, explain how each feature works, and show you how to use them effectively in real-world scenarios.

One of the most powerful yet often overlooked features in Power Query is the “Reduce Rows” section found under the Home tab. This set of tools allows you to filter, remove, and keep specific rows based on your criteria—making your data cleaner, leaner, and more meaningful.

After spending time transforming data—removing duplicates, changing data types, splitting columns, or merging tables—you need to decide how to bring the cleaned data back into Excel or Power BI. This is where the Close section comes into play.

The Query section is located in the Home Tab of the Power Query Editor. While it may look simple at first, it actually provides important functions for managing queries efficiently. Instead of just focusing on data transformations, you also need to think about how your queries are structured.

Working with data often means dealing with many unnecessary or messy columns. When importing raw data from CSV files, databases, or online sources, it’s common to get extra columns that you don’t actually need in your analysis. This is where the Manage Columns section in the Home Tab of Power Query becomes extremely useful.