All language subtitles for 5. Power BI Demo Working with Text Tools

Next up we've got text specific tools and looking at the transform tab and the query editor.

You'll notice that power be-I groups different sets of tools together based on their purpose or function.

So in this case we'll find all of our text specific tools grouped together at the end of the ribbon.

And within this group we have some really interesting powerful options.

For one we can split up a column based on a specific character or delimiter or based on a number of

characters.

We can format any of our text columns using basic formatting options like lowercase uppercase proper

case which is capitalizing the first letter of each word.

Or we can use tools like trim which eliminates leading and trailing spaces or clean which does the same

thing and also eliminates non principal characters.

Now you might be thinking that those trim and clean options really aren't that helpful until you run

into the case where you have one trailing space in your data set.

And trust me this will drive you crazy the first time you experience it until you figure it out.

And the problem is as human beings we are incapable of seeing a trailing space it's completely invisible

to us and it looks exactly the same as another data point.

Without that trailing space but to excel or in this case to power be-I it looks like a completely different

and unique value.

So in cases like that trim or clean can be great tools just to standardize and help avoid issues like

that especially if you're working with really messy or unstructured text data.

We also have some great extract tools we can extract a certain subset of characters from a string based

on a specified length.

We can extract the first or last number of characters or a range but where it gets really interesting

is using delimiters.

So we can tell power be-I that we want to return all of the characters before a specific delimiter or

symbol or character or after it or between two distinct delimiters.

There are also some advanced options as well that allow you to specify whether you search from the left

side of the string or the right.

And if you want to skip a certain number of instances of the delimiter before returning text.

So some really great flexibility there with those extract tools.

So you may have noticed that some of the tools here are greyed out inactive like merge columns or parce.

And that brings up a really important point which is that this toolbar is completely dynamic based on

what you've selected.

So if you've only selected a single column the merge columns option is irrelevant so you can't even

click it.

You don't have to select multiple columns in order to activate that option and then taking that even

further if you've selected a column that's numerical instead of text this entire group of tools might

be replaced by a number of specific tools instead.

So just remember that the entire ribbon the entire toolbar that you're seeing here will dynamically

change based on your selections.

Now one more very important point before we shift gears into power be-I any time you see this yellow

box that says hey this is important.

You guessed it.

I'm about to talk about something important.

So that means focus and pay attention.

Stop playing with the dog or checking Facebook because this is something that is going to come up time

and time again in the course.

And it's really really important for you to fully grasp and understand.

So what I want to talk about now is the difference between transform and add column because this is

something that confused me for longer than I care to admit.

And what I was noticing is that the same tools.

In fact the same identical sets of tools kept popping up in different places.

And for the longest time I just thought this was really confusing and redundant until I realized that

the outcome is completely different depending on where you select that tool.

So when you select a tool from within the transform tab you're essentially modifying or overwriting

the column that you've selected.

But when you choose a tool from the add column tab you're creating a brand new column to your table.

So that may sound really obvious when I say it now but I guarantee as you're learning this tool and

as you're playing around with the query editor you will at some point in time select the tool from the

wrong tab and that's OK because obviously nothing's set in stone.

It's as simple as just deleting that last applied step and you're back where you started.

But it is something to keep in mind and hopefully that will help you at least understand where you're

going wrong and why these tools appear in multiple places.

So let's open up power be-I and get our hands dirty with some of these text tools.

So here I am in my Adventure Works report.

Go ahead and open it up as well.

Going to head back into the get data option quick text ESV again this time instead of products.

Let's go into Adventure Works customers and double click here we've got our preview.

All of these default settings look good so I can go ahead and click it to launch the query editor.

All right.

So first things first here's our A.W. product lookup query that we created in the last lecture and now

we see a second for Adventure Works.

Customer.

So let's go through those two steps that we do every time we get in here to the query editor.

To start with the table name and for the sake of consistency let's go with A.W. underscore Whoops.

Customer look up the last file that we loaded was called product look at and it was called product look

up for a reason because it had all sorts of information about individual products where each row represented

a unique product key and each column represented some attribute about that product.

Now similarly here we're looking at customer data instead.

So you can press Enter lock in my table name and as they look in the preview here as you can see I've

got a customer key and then all sorts of attributes about my customers.

So let's go ahead and finish our quick Q&A.

We've got column headers that look correct.

Let's look at the data values very quickly.

Our key is a whole number which is good got names which are strings or text fields which are good.

Got a birth date column which is a date represented by this little calendar icon in the top left.

And then as we scroll through marital status gender e-mail all text.

This one's interesting and actually recognize the annual income field as a currency or fixed decimal.

That's fine we can leave it as is.

And then we've got total children education level occupation and a homeowner.

Yes no flag.

All text.

So check those boxes.

Everything looks good.

And now we can proceed to our table transformations.

So first things first.

Scroll over I've got my eye on these these named columns because they're all uppercase and that looks

silly to me.

So I'd like to make those proper case instead.

So let's go ahead and select the prefix column go into add column Feiner text tools here.

And what we want to do is go into the format tools and click capitalize each word which is proper case.

When we do that.

So it created a new column here at the end of our table which is essentially a duplicate version of

our prefix column.

But with the correct capitalization and you can see that the header name has been defaulted to capitalize

each word which is just totally ridiculous.

And as you probably have guessed by now the reason this happened was because we accessed that format

tool through the add column tab when what we really wanted to do was simply overwrite the existing column

and transform it.

So we should have accessed the formatting tools through the transform tab instead.

And so that's what I'm talking about it's very easy to make these kind of mistakes.

So you really just have to be vigilant about knowing which tab you're in each time you create a calculate

column but no worries.

The good news is that it's a very easy fix.

You can't control Z to undo here.

The equivalent is just going into your applied steps and pressing the X to remove that last step that

we just created.

So now scroll back select the prefix column again make sure that Im in my transform tab and go through

that same process format capitalize each word.

And there you go it's overwritten the values into the format that I'd prefer.

Now to do the same thing to the first and last name columns I could do them individually or I can select

one hold the shift key click the other that will grab both in the same time and let's do the two for

one special capitalized each word.

So now I have a nice clean prefix first name and last name.

So that's helpful but I'd really like to have the customer's full name accessible in a single field

as well.

So what that means is that I'd like to merge all three of these columns together and separate them with

a space to create a brand new column that will name full name.

So what I've done is select prefix held shift so that last name to grab all three and instead of clicking

merge warning signs we're still in the transform tab.

I need to make sure to go into add column instead and access the merge tool from here.

So when I click merge columns it gives me a little dialog box with some options.

In this case I do want a separator in between the values I want that to be a space and let's name our

new column full name.

So press OK.

And you can see it's added a new step and I scroll to the right.

There we go we've got our new full name column looks good we've got spaces between the names.

And now one thing to note is kind of a side note.

It and this step but it kind of gave it a default name that says inserted merged column.

Now as I click through it's pretty easy to see exactly what column was merged and what was added.

But if we want to make this even more clear I can always right click and rename that step and instead

of just saying inserted merged column can actually type full name.

That just makes it a little bit more explicit.

What's going on.

I inserted a new column and it's called full name.

All right.

So next up I want to make a couple more changes.

I want to really focus on this email address column here and the first thing that I want to do is extract

the username from this email.

But the problem is I can't just say give me the first five characters because that would work for John

24 but not Eugene 10.

So it's got to be a dynamic number of characters from the left side of this email address based on the

location of that at symbol.

So this is where we're going to use that extract based on delimiter option.

So go ahead and select e-mail address.

I want to add a new column for username.

I'm going to use the extract tools here.

So again not just the default length not an explicit number of characters but I want the text before

a delimiter so here you go.

All I need to do is say the delimiter that you're looking for is that at sign we drill into the advanced

options.

This is where you can say you know search from the left or search from the right.

You can skip a certain number of instances of the delimiter.

This case we don't need any of that.

All we want is the text before the at sign.

So press OK add in the new column as you can see it didn't let me name the column at the same time but

it did give me the values that I want.

So what I can do here is just double click the column header and I can give it a name let's call it

user name.

Now let's do one more similar example but with one more complication.

So going back to our email address what if this time instead of the username we want to return the domain

name and the domain is anything that falls between the at symbol and the dot com at the end of the string.

To do that I can use the same extract tools but this time I want the text between two delimiters so

I can go into this option here and I can say my start delimiter is the at sign and my end delimiter

is either the period or I can type.

Dot com both will do the same thing.

And when I press.

OK.

Same exact idea.

It's given me a new column with the string or the characters between those two delimiters.

It can change the column title to something like domain and press enter.

And there you have it.

So very very easy way to do some pretty complex stuff.

So one last adjustment to make to this domain column here.

I want to get rid of the dash and replace it with a space so to do that I'm going to transform the existing

column not add a new one and you'll see this other grouping of tools that say any column.

That means there are not text or number or date specific.

They can be applied in a number of different circumstances.

In this case I'll find the replace tool right here in the set.

So it's as simple as it sounds.

I can find the dash and I can replace it with a space press.

OK.

Now I've got adventure space works and why don't we go ahead and format that capitalized in proper case

and we are all set.

So there you go.

We use the formatting options.

We added columns we transformed columns.

We use the extract tools based on delimiters.

We merged columns.

Some really good examples of how these different text functions can be used to enhance and clean and

transform a data table.

So I think we're all good with customers look up.

The only thing left is to go back to our home tab and click close and apply to load that data into our

file and as soon as that loads up we'll see that it's going to appear as another object right here in

our relationships tab right next to our friend product look up we'll also see it available in our field

list accessible in both the data view and the report view.

So there you have it queery editing text tools.