In Excel 2016, Power Query is no longer an Excel add-in but a native feature of Excel, and what’s more, you can now use VBA to create and manage Power Query queries.
I’ve found two sources of information about how to use VBA with Power Query in Excel 2016. First, there are some code samples on the Technet Gallery here:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/VBA-to-automate-Power-956a52d1#content
…and Gil Raviv, a Program Manager at Microsoft, has also asked for feedback on this functionality on this thread:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/1eac9c36-b6e4-48f0-a51a-fa92b24cf1d9/vba-and-power-query-in-excel-2016-preview-lets-get-started?forum=powerquery
Secondly, I was contacted recently by Tycho Grouwstra who shared with me some of the interesting work he has done using VBA and Power Query in the Excel 2016 Preview, and who has very kindly allowed me to blog about it here. His work is much more representative of how I think most people will want to use this feature.
Tycho sent me a .xlsm file containing all of the VBA code, which you can download here. Obviously the code only works in the Excel 2016 Preview, but you can still open the file and look at the code in Excel 2013. However if you’re worried about downloading a workbook with macros in, I extracted the code to a text document which you can see here. If you want to copy the code to use in your own workbook, you’ll need to go to the VBA Editor, select Tools/References and add a reference to “Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects 6.1 Library”.
The VBA code includes examples of how to:
- Delete all the Power Query queries in a workbook
- Export/import the M code for all queries to/from another Excel workbook
- Export/import the M code for all queries to text files
- Refresh all the Power Query queries in the workbook
- Load a query to an Excel table
A few bugs/features in the Preview are also pointed out, namely:
- Imported queries don’t always show up in the Workbook Queries pane; the workaround is to close and reopen the workbook
- Functions aren’t recognised as functions (ie they don’t have the fx icon) until you open the Query Editor and the Close & Load
- Query groups aren’t supported yet – which is a bit of an oversight, in my opinion, but the forums thread linked to above indicates it won’t be addressed before RTM unfortunately
- Loading the output of a query into an Excel table using the code given here doesn’t seem to have the same result as loading a query to a table in the worksheet using the Power Query UI: it creates a blue, rather than green, table that doesn’t always retain row order.
I can imagine a lot of serious Power Query users will create workbooks containing a library of their most useful queries and functions, and use VBA code to copy these queries and functions into new workbooks as and when necessary. We’ll have to wait and see what Microsoft’s plans for sharing Power Query queries are, whether they’ll go beyond what’s already been seen in Office 365 Power BI, whether they will be part of a bigger bundle of services and what the cost will be.
Incidentally, the sample workbook contains a lot of interesting, generally useful Power Query queries and functions written by Tycho and others which is also available in the following GitHub repository: https://github.com/tycho01/pquery
