Power Query Tips to Speed Up Your Workflow

Power Query is one of Excel’s best-kept secrets — and if you’re not using it yet, you’re probably spending too much time cleaning, reshaping, or merging data manually.

Whether you're a beginner or already dabbling with it, these five tips will help you get more from Power Query, and might just change the way you work with data forever.

**1. Use “Remove Other Columns” Early**

When importing data, it’s tempting to delete the columns you don’t need. But Power Query has a better tool: “Remove Other Columns.” This tells Excel exactly which columns to keep — making your query more resilient if new columns are added to the source later.

**2. Rename Your Steps**

By default, each action in Power Query gets a generic step name like “Changed Type” or “Filtered Rows.” Rename them to something meaningful like “Keep only active clients” or “Convert dates to text”. It helps you understand and troubleshoot your logic later — especially on big queries.

**3. Don’t Fear the Formula Bar**

Power Query has its own language called M. Even if you’re not a coder, glancing at the formula bar can give you insight into what each step is doing. Sometimes you can tweak a word or number right there instead of redoing the whole step.

**4. Turn Off “Auto Detect Data Types”**

Excel loves to guess what kind of data it’s looking at — but it often guesses wrong. In Power Query options, disable auto data type detection so you stay in control of what’s text, numbers, dates, or custom types.

**5. Load to a Table — Not the Worksheet**

If you're loading large data sets, consider loading directly into a table (or into the data model). It keeps your workbook lighter and faster, especially when refreshing queries or working with pivot tables downstream.

Once your data is clean and well-structured in Power Query, it’s ready for analysis. Try using SUMIFS to filter and total your cleaned data with multiple criteria — it’s the perfect companion function.

Once you get the hang of Power Query, it feels like you’ve unlocked a whole new part of Excel. Instead of wrestling with copy-paste routines or formulas, you create reusable “recipes” for clean, reliable data.

Want even more ways to speed up your Excel workflow? Check out our Top 3 Excel shortcuts that save serious time with just a few keystrokes.

In my Excel training sessions, this is often the moment where people lean back and say: *“Why didn’t I know about this sooner?”*

Now you do.