Data preview features in Power Query

Data Preparation in Power BI

Khaled Choucri

Strategic Analyst - Trilogy

What is data preview?

  • Set of features that allow you to analyze your data in Power Query.
  • Can be found under the View ribbon of Power Query.

A screen shot of Power Query showing the view ribbon selected and highlighting the data preview features

  • Consists of:

    • Column distribution
    • Column quality
    • Column profile

  • By default, is based on top 1000 rows (but can be changed)

Data Preparation in Power BI

Why use data preview?

  • Helps diagnose errors and inconsistencies in your dataset
  • Shows how a transformation affected your dataset
  • Enables quick analysis of some columns and helps you decide what transformation(s) to use
Data Preparation in Power BI

How to use data preview?

Column distribution
  • Preview the distribution of all columns
  • Count of unique and distinct values

A screen shot showing the output of the column distribution feature.

Column quality
  • Evaluates the amount of valid, error, and missing values in all columns

A screens shot showing the output of the column quality feature.

Column profile
  • Provides statistics for a single column
  • Also shows distribution of data
  • Also shows number of unique and distinct values

Note: Column profile only appears when you select a column

A screen shot showing the output of the column distribution feature.

Data Preparation in Power BI

Additional uses for data preview

  • Data preview features also have a contextual menu that can be used to quickly apply some transformations
  • It can be accessed by hovering over the output of the data preview feature.

A screen shot of the contextual menu that appears after hovering over the column quality feature

Data Preparation in Power BI

Let's practice!

Data Preparation in Power BI

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