Automatically Remove Top Junk Rows & Combine Data from Multiple Excel Files

Check out our newly launched M Language course ↗️ - goodly.co.in/learn-m-powerquery/
In this video, we will learn to remove junk rows from the top and combine data from multiple Excel files. We will explore three Excel files, each containing a few unwanted rows at the top. Our goal is to remove this inconsistent number of junk rows and merge the data from all the files automatically.
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Please browse around, you'd find a ton of interesting videos that I have created :) Cheers!

[@nelson_k_d]

I saved the entire syntax as follows: Add Custome Column =Table.PromoteHeaders(Table.Skip([Data], each not List.ContainsAny( Record.ToList(_), {"Header1", "Header2"} ))) Works wonders!! Thanks a ton bro!!

[@odallamico]

Dear, you are a genius. You make M language look so easy. I appreciate your videos, my respects to you.

[@OmisileKehindeOlugbenga]

Pretty awesome! Thanks a lot for this. Record, Table and List object manipulation in one video for one task without using "Remove Other Columns"

[@iankr]

Brilliant! Many thanks, Mr Goodly.

[@santiagovillamoreno6821]

Beautiful Power Query techniques!!

[@rhaps2008]

Amazing, I have had to struggle through with this exact issue to manually remove those junk rows, your a life saver I will be using this in the future

[@tARasKoni]

M-Masterpiece! Packing a lot of slick tricks in one video. Thank you Chandeep!

[@decentmendreams]

Your methods become so refined over time . Awesome job

[@Phippsy23]

Amazing, I've done this with a fixed Skip value but this is on another level! Thanks

[@roywilson9580]

Thanks for the video. Much better than only skipping rows to one hardcoded value, makes sense to use if your column order is not the same across data tables.

[@ramonillarramendi3191]

Wow..Amazing. Been struggling with removing dynamically the junk and with custom headers for a while now. This works like a charm. Thanks a mill.

[@retamapark]

Thanks, Chandeep! I knew you had posted this, and I had this problem today. I was fooling around with different other approaches that were a mess. This was perfect!

[@goodnewskasparyaodzramedo9097]

This is wonderful @Goodly. I watch all your videos. From the logic to the solution of the problem and the actual solution. God continually bless you, you are a messiah!

[@inaction2024]

This is a lifesaving technique. Thank you for sharing with us.

[@davidjosevarelagarcia7011]

Great , excellent. Simple like that. Thanks.

[@vl21i]

Super Awesome, Chandeep. Very powerful formulas that you are teaching in a simple and easy understandable way ! Power Query and DAX are having lot of hidden treasures

[@pmsocho]

Awesome. Great logic. Thanks for the video.

[@ursvenky6394]

Awesome video. I was struggling earlier. I had work by using macro. This is very cool. Thanks Goodly

[@rajanpradeepankarath8846]

yeah that is pretty damn awesome, Chandeep. this is an everyday challenge

[@ShubhamSharma-ls6hj]

Very well explained thanku so much brother.

[@rohitwaradpande2492]

This was awesome video. Thanks for the same. I liked the trick that you used to removed the blanks dynamically.

[@zahir585]

Genius 🔥 thank you my friend sooo helpful ❤️❤️❤️

[@zeinh5139]

Wow ! thank you

[@justinwduff]

Thank you, SO MUCH! Had about 200 files to combine with various junk rows up top and now I can do it :D

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Woah.. thats a lot of files. I am glad I could help

[@Ratnakumarwrites]

Super Video Chandeep.

[@tiagocarvalhal4502]

Incredible. Thanks :)

[@user-sn8vk9lt4o]

I am actually learning power query its Excellent. I like the way to teach. Thank u so, Much for this video.

[@jianlinchen7978]

really very helpful. Thanks . It is a good idea

[@chrism9037]

Fantastic Chandeep, thank you!

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Glad you liked it !

[@user-tp3jq8qg8l]

admiring the brilliance

[@syrophenikan]

Fantastic! This is definitely going into my daily routine.

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Enjoy! 😉

[@joukenienhuis6888]

Thanks again for such a great clear videobabout the next step in PowerQuery. I am new in PowerQuery, but i am experimenting on DAX and you are giving a great explanation

[@stefankirst3234]

Really awesome!

[@arbazahmad7177]

Fantastic 🎉.. Thanks 😊

[@mohamedheltoukhy2355]

Amazing Thanks alot

[@Chillman666]

You have no idea how much Power Query has helped me to automate my tasks. Also I have been struggling with this problem. A big THANK YOU ❤!

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Happy to help! 😉

[@MrKamranhaider0]

JUST AMAZAING SUPERB

[@gennarocimmino]

I would say simply amazing !!!!

[@rahulmahajan5932]

Awe Stucked... No Words to Express How Fantabulous It is

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Thanks Rahul :)

[@emilmubarakshin49]

Fantastic video and amazing explanation!

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Many thanks :)

[@cherianiype]

ooff!! SHABASH! Terrific video Chandeep! Superb!! Sixer Maar diya!

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Thanks 😉

[@Rice0987]

Magosh... It's just simple brilliant!💎 Thanks a bunch for yor priceless help!🤗👦

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Thanks :)

[@manojsakthi6201]

its very awesome, i hade a similar issue had to work around it, but this looks pretty good

[@hassanjatta4257]

Awesome!!!

[@aahanavikram07]

You hear the problem it seems😂 I was using filter method and removing null values and a lot of other filter method. Thanks for making the work easier and cleaner ❤

[@itgyantricks7218]

excellent

[@abhijitmodak3461]

Thanks!

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Thanks a lot Abhijit :)

[@swathimanda5342]

Hi Goodly, That was an amazing video. I learned a lot from your videos for my daily tasks with excel. It saves lot of my time. God bless you. I have a question please if you can answer that, when I covert pdf to excel most of the column values are not aligned into 1 column but locate on either side. Ex: column B dates, should be in column B but on few rows it will be on A or C. How can I align them into just 1 column B. Please advise. Thank you for all your great videos. 🙏

[@josealvesferreira1683]

very nice

[@bulbulahmed4414]

Amazing

[@RogerStocker]

unbelievable crazy as usual.

[@setantadundalk]

Very sleek. I had this very same issue but I used List.Generate to loop through each record which suppose would take slightly more processing time but nothing you would ever notice.

[@j_baisley_]

Damn awesome is right 👍

[@stephenandrews1291]

this is awesome; thank you! one question - i need to add a column into the combined file that shows the original source filename for each record... where in the flow and how best to do that please?

[@udayteja6595]

Great

[@boissierepascal5755]

Power query is magic ! You are a wonderful magician 🪄

[@bohdanduda652]

Another way, how we can do it, it is add additional column using List.PositionOf and due to that calculate in which position we have Date and Profit

[@Donkeys_Dad_Adam]

This is great! What is the best way to do this when your source files are not formatted as Tables, but are simply Excel Worksheets?

[@wensesvincen4877]

Hi Goodly, Wonderful and Powerful Trick...Keep up the good work. What if you are importing from PDF files...Trying to convert the binary gives a different results.

[@noorbisharmohamed]

Fantastic! But can we use "is blank" instead of "not Contain any" as the condition? Or promote headers if record contains any " Date", "Amount" etc?

[@excel-in-g]

As always, very neat & clear stuff. 👍 I was wondering if one can't use Table.FindText? Like, each Table.Skip( _,Table.PositionOf(_, Table.FindText(_, "Profit"){0} ))) But only testing for 1 column header here.

[@ankursharma6157]

Token of Gratitude!

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Thank you so much Ankur

[@rogeriopsvalle]

Hi Goodly. Thanks for all videos. They are just great. I need to combine two of your tricks in just one. I have many sheets with junk lines (same number of junk lines for all sheets) and these same sheets have inconsistent columns. How do I do that? Thanks in advance

[@GoodlyChandeep]

You code to remove the junk headers can probably be Table.Skip ( Table, List.MatchesAny(Record.ToList(_), each _ "null" or each _ "") After this you can promote the headers and then follow the inconsistent header video.

[@andreass.3130]

Hi Goodly, thanks for all your great videos. Isn't there a simpler way to do it here? In the example file you create a conditional column (If Column1=Date Then True). Then you fill the conditional column downwards. Now you have a True for all rows you need and a null value above the desired header row. So you can filter for True. Shouldn't that be dynamic as well?

[@DAXifiedSatish]

No. In that way if u filter true it will be with junk rows and all data except headers and if u filter for false u will get only headers

[@SandhyaSingh-qk6up]

Can this also be solved by using index number and custom function?

[@mohitchaturvedi8931]

Delighted, this is the problem of every hour. Many times data come with merged header, which you have sorted already,

[@babakmohammadi9931]

could you possibly tell me what do i have to do with CSV files for "Table.TransformColumns(Source, {"Content", Excel.Workbook})" as that dosent work for CSV

[@patrickharilantoraherinjat2994]

Great video Goodly ! what if I have a junk rows and also a junk columns. is it possible to combine? Thanks

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Thanks Patrick. May this video will help kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z5fRaZmOjtxpg5Y

[@ajay249]

Goodly is just too Godly.

[@cooolbreeze]

Pretty cool. Seems the only thing that would limit what one can do with PQ is one's imagination. Question, why List.ContainsAny instead of List.ContainsAll?

[@starprinceofficial9603]

For me my question if we need to bring the data before the columns as a new column before promoting headers, how do we go about it

[@huyuc6614]

Hi i stuck on the step transform column. My file is .csv file not xlsx so when i use transformcolumn, it show error on the content. Do you know how to fix it

[@eslamfahmy87]

Actually, I think you are the only youtuber instructor who is preparing depth & creative PQ examples. Really, fantastic 👏, elegance & more simple 😊

[@devendrareddynamballa1053]

What if we want to add back the removed rows after promoting the headers

[@eslamfahmy87]

If the name & kind of data which extracted into PQ it's inconsistent and i need to filter out for all non needed sheets, How can work with that sheet

[@denissipchenko2455]

Thanks for sharing! But looks like there should be List.ContainsAll instead of List.ContainsAny

[@excel-in-g]

Was thinking the same.

[@PandaVlademirBerlin]

What if i need the source.file column?

[@ankitachauhan5834]

How to do same thing but fro CSV file

[@williamarthur4801]

This may sound like a stupid question, and I'm sure it's something basic, but why do you get Name = Sheet , Data = Table, but I always have Name= table , Name = Sheet and adjacent Data = table, Data = table ? Oh, and loved the use of a condition for skip which I'd never thought of, even though now having looked it does say count or condition.

[@cdmkk2211]

How can I add files name as a column in this

[@markp8600]

Fabulous video , but it is difficult to see the "Applied Steps" at the end of the video. Question: what if the junk rows and "junk row data" are spread inconsistently through the spreadsheet. For example, the fund or department information may change resulting in blank rows between datasets and header rows when a new fund source or department is identified in the report. The example shows how to remove junk rows at the top of the report for 3 reports. Do you have any videos where the junk rows would be sporadically located throughout the report?

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Mark, I'll have to take a look at the data to give you possible ways to solving it. See if you can pick any tricks from this long video - kzbin.info/www/bejne/lYuuhWSolqhnhpI I've shared horizontal and vertical looping techniques in this video.

[@markp8600]

@@GoodlyChandeep - Hi Chandeep, I could share a file with you on your website. I could upload on the PQ training course site. Would that work? Thanks for the great insights!

[@markp8600]

@@GoodlyChandeep Perfect! Thank you so much Chandeep. Your help and guidance is greatly appreciated. Cheers!

[@haroldmadrigal3671]

it fails when there is #ref or formulas(lookup) in the junk rows

[@carolshipley7903]

Hi. Can you give me away of doing this if there is more than one worksheet in the excel file and you only want to clean just one worksheet?

[@GoodlyChandeep]

If you're connecting to a single xl file, you'll have to apply a filter before the Navigation Step to restrict the sheet names that you want.

[@retamapark]

Not as sophisticated, but say you had a table with two columns, Col1 and Col2. There are junk rows at the top. The row with headers has the values "Date" and "Amount". This seems for work and is easy to implement. let Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="Table1"]}[Content], Custom1 = Table.Skip(Source, each [Col1] "Date" and [Col2] "Amount") in Custom1

[@retamapark]

fnTableSkipDynamic(Source, "Col1", "Date", "Col2", "Amount") Function to do this: Input column names as text, header values as text. (sourcetablename as table, col1name as text, header1value as text, col2name as text, header2value as text)=> let return = Table.Skip(sourcetablename, each ( Record.Field(_, col1name) header1value) and ( Record.Field(_, col2name) header2value) ) in return

[@GoodlyChandeep]

List.matchesall can look for both the headers. 👍

[@odallamico]

Does this process also apply to delete the lastN rows? I am trying but it does not work

[@odallamico]

I have been working in the case of TABLE.REMOVELASTN, but using the text.contains function to place part of the required text as a condition: LowerRowsRemoved = Table.RemoveLastN(Header, each not List.Contains( List.Transform(Record.ToList(_), each Logical.ToText( Text.Contains(_, "Word")), "true"))) where Word is part of a word (e.g. Worder). The function works perfectly, returning as in your video, a column with FALSE or TRUE, where False is the condition record. But to make it work, I had to change the type of the added column to text type, before applying the function copied above because it gave me the error: Expression.Error: We cannot convert the value true to type Text. Details: Value=TRUE Type=[Type] In your case (to delete top rows) this was not necessary. Would you have any idea why in one case it is necessary to change type in one case and not in another? Thank you

[@odallamico]

After several hours of study and modifications, I realize that even in your video, with having placed: Table.Skip(#“Added Custom”, [Custom]), at minute 5.57 the function works and recognizes without problem the rows to be deleted. That means, the condition is not necesary put it in the argument, because the condition is in the Custom Column added

[@deepraazshaw7369]

Sir, can we get all these videos in Hindi?

[@user-ni9sj8gv2o]

Hi Chandeep, i want to enroll your course about Dax and Data Modelling (Bundle), can you give me some discount? hehe it's too expensive for me :(

[@Piyush.A]

😯😨😲

[@abhiadfree6331]

Lets name you the M-man...

[@utkur765]

Why not to use 2 column and filter out "null"? This will remove all just rows from all files.

[@GoodlyChandeep]

Column 2 can have legit null values

[@excel-k-sir]

Bhai I am sure you have definitely made your hands dirty in cleaning up the Consolidated Account Statement for MF. Can you please create a video on how to clean up the Statement.

[@DJPejsen]

Source = Folder.Files("C: \Users\pc\Desktop \Remove Top Rows"), ContentTbl = Table.TransformColumns( Source, { "Content", each Excel.Workbook(_) } ), ExpandData = Table.ExpandTableColumn( ContentTbl, "Content", {"Data"}, {"Data"} ), TableSkipRows = Table.PromoteHeaders( Table.TransformColumns( ExpandData, { "Data", each Table.Skip(_, each [Column1] "Date" or [Column5] "Profit")) } ) )

[@eslamfahmy87]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/i5-Xh3h6rLqdh9U what the difference between the 2 tutorials

[@sergioalbar]

Amazing, you are a real crack !

[@brightonalbert3237]

Great