NOTE: This post was written before Data Explorer was renamed as Power Query. All of the content is still relevant to Power Query.
It’s only been two days since the official Preview release of Data Explorer and already the blog posts about it are coming thick and fast. Here are some of the more interesting ones that I’ve seen that show what’s possible with it:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson/archive/2013/02/28/traversing-the-facebook-graph-using-data-explorer.aspx
http://www.mattmasson.com/index.php/2013/03/access-the-windows-azure-marketplace-from-data-explorer/
http://community.altiusconsulting.com/best-oscar-winning-film-my-first-data-explorer-adventure/
http://www.spsdemo.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=c67861cd-a0d9-4ed8-9d9d-9b29652a516f&ID=371&Web=f74569c2-ae3f-42c6-a3fa-9f099dfaeb7f
Obviously I can’t let everyone else have all the fun, so I thought I’d show how you can use Data Explorer to import data from multiple files, clean it, load it into a single table and then report on it.
First of all, the data. Like all bloggers I have an unhealthy interest in my blog stats, and one of the ways I monitor the hits on this site is using Statcounter. I’m also a bit of a miser, though, so I only use their freebie service and that means that I only get to see stats on the last 500 site visits. How can I analyse this data then? Well, Statcounter allow you to download log data as a csv file, so at about 2:30pm I downloaded one file and at 8:30pm I downloaded another.
Now, the first cool thing to show about Data Explorer is that you can import and merge data from multiple files with the same structure if they’re in the same folder. With both of my files in a folder called Blog Logs, and Excel open, the first thing you need to do is to the Data Explorer tab and hit From File/From Folder:
The next step is to enter the name of the folder with the files in in the dialog:
With that done, a new Query screen appears with a list of the files in the folder:
You then need to hit the icon with the two down arrows and a horizontal line that I’ve highlighted in the screenshot above, next to the Content heading. This then shows the data in the files (obviously I’ve had to scrub out the sensitive data here):
You can then use the first row as the column headers:
Filter the data so that the row with the second set of column headers is removed (I wonder if there’s a way to do this automatically when importing multiple csv files?) by clicking on the Date and Time column and deselecting the value “Date and Time” as shown:
Right-click on each column you don’t want to import (such as IP Address) and selecting Hide:
Right-click on the Date and Time column and select Remove Duplicates to remove any records that appear in both log files (I’m assuming that there were no cases where two people hit a page at exactly the same date and time, which of course may not be completely correct):
And force the Date and Time column to be treated as a Date/Time type:
And bingo, you’re done. Here are all the steps in the import, all of which can be edited, deleted, reordered etc:
The data is then loaded into a table in a worksheet (though you can turn that off), and by clicking “Load to data model” in the Query Settings pane you can load the data into the Excel data model:
(NB I found some issues with loading date data into the data model and US/European date formats that I’ve reported here, but don’t forget this is beta software so there are bound to be problems like this)
You can build cool Power View reports using this data:
Or even explore it on a 3D map with GeoFlow:
Fun, isn’t it?
Just a quick question…what’s the fundamental functional difference between this and PowerPivot? Aside from the available data sources (and the product architecture) what would cause people to use one over the other?
Hi Andy,
Basically, Data Explorer is all about moving data from external data sources, transforming it, and bringing it into Excel, and also making that a repeatable process. PowerPivot is very different: it’s all about being able to do fast, ad-hoc analysis and complex reporting on the data. Although I highlighted the scenarios where they are interchangeable in this post, in a lot of ways they are very different tools.
HTH,
Chris
Thanks for the response Chris, best way to see similarities/differences is using it. And with that I’m off to run through your tutorial posts.
I tried to do the same thing but with Excel files. All workbooks in the folder have the same structure – only the data differs. New workbooks are regularily added to the list. I would like to combine specific sheets in each file. I cannot get the method that you describe to work; only the first file is imported. would you have any idea on how to solve this issue ? (Excel 2010)
Bertrand
Hi Bertrand, wouldn’t it be easier to use the ‘Import From Folder’ option? That might be easier.
This is what I tried to do, as presented in your post. The pb I have is that after the binarycombine step (when you hit the icon with the two down arrows), only the first Excel file appears.
In the Data Explorer window you might only see a sample of the data – what happens when the query actually executes in Excel?
Same result. Only one file is processed. But things are getting worse: As I was making some more tests, I edited the values in one file, and now the query returns an error “DataFormat.Error: The input could not be recognized as a valid Excel document. Details: Binary”. Yet the files in my test could not be simpler !
It seems that the Binary.Combine(Source[Content]) statement does not work with Excel files and that a different approach must be used.
I have struggled to find a comprehensive documentation of the Data Explorer syntax, and I do not know whether loops are supported, but one could try to iterate through the table created by the Folder.Files intial statement. But this is beyond my current knowledge…
Strange. I’ve also seen some buggy behaviour on the current build when importing from multiple text files, so this could be related. I see you’ve asked this question on the Data Explorer forum – I think the dev team are going to be the best people to help you with this.
FYI, I finally found a way to do what I wanted from the combination of a recent blog post of Devin Knight with yours. See http://tinyurl.com/lpwtc7a
Chris, Devin, you made my day ! Thanks.
I have the same problem as Bertrand. How did he solve the problem?
See http://tinyurl.com/lpwtc7a
DataFormat.Error: The input could not be recognized as a valid Excel document. Details: Binary
I an getting the same error. Help
I don’t know the answer, sorry – you should ask this on http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=powerquery&filter=alltypes&sort=lastpostdesc
It looks like you have tried to ‘binary combine’ Excel files. If it is the case, you may be Interested by Miguel’s response in this thread: http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/importing-data-from-multiple-log-files-using-data-explorer/
Oups. Wrong link
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/418827d2-e89b-45d7-bb9c-1b013f764327/running-an-append-combine-query-on-a-list-of-excel-files-stored-in-a-folder
Does anyone know if the use of 32 bit excel and 32 bit power query will make a difference if your operating system is a 64 bit?
No, it should not make any difference whether you use 32 bit or 64 bit Excel I think.