What Is Power Query?

Before you can build reliable reports, you need reliable data. Power Query is Power BI's built-in tool for cleaning and transforming raw data before it enters your data model. In this chapter, you'll learn what Power Query is, how it fits into the Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) workflow, and why cleaning data before analysis is essential.

You'll take a guided tour of the Power Query Editor, including the Queries pane, data preview area, and the Applied Steps pane. You'll also learn that Power Query never modifies your original files, so you can experiment freely without risk.