M Is for (Data) Monkey: A Guide to the M Language in Excel Power Query

I can't say enough good things about this book! The authors, Ken Puls and Miguel Escobar, present Power Query in a way that is totally accessible to Excel users. There are clear explanations, good examples and files so the reader can perform the steps along with the book. I have gone through the book at least three times, and participated in a training workshop given by the authors, and I continue to learn new things each time. In the book Ken and Miguel say, "There is no doubt in our minds that Power Query will change the way Excel pros work with data forever." I'm not sure I'm quite to the level as an Excel pro (I hope to be when I grow up!), but this book definitely HAS changed how I work with data. Power Query and the M language makes it fun to do data cleanup!

This book is a great guide to pick up Power Query and get going from simple to complex data transformation. Probably the contents of this book cover most day to day situations, which delivers on the goal of learning Power Query. In the other hand the M language has so much more to offer, and for that a second more technical book might make sense for the authors to offer in the near future.

This is an excellent book, not only for Excel professionals but intermediate users who need to cleanse data. Regular Excel is powerful because of all the functions that can be assembled to get a job done. However, the resulting formulas become a hell of parenthesis that are hard to troubleshoot. Through the use of Power Query, there are built-in features that nearly eliminate the need for wild, complex formulas and nesting SUBSTITUTE, LEN, FIND, etc. Thus, someone who just can't write those formulas in Excel can get a lot more success in Power Query. "M is for Data Monkey" is your access to Power Query. Ken and Miguel do an EXCELLENT job of explaining Power Query's range of uses and showing side-by-side equivalents of: 1. This is how ____ is done in regular Excel, and 2. This is the way to handle _____ in Power Query Great book, easy to get through, good examples.

The first 2/3 of chapters about power query functions and fairly basic, but from the M Language chapter on is quiet good and informative.

Awesome reference - I have used it so much that it is ragged and frayed! And what's neat is that everything that you learn about Power Query (PQ) is translatable to Excel Power BI (where it found as Get Data). I like to describe PQ as the "Excel import wizard on steroids" and it is invaluable to those of us that use/combine/mash together data from disparate sources. This reference has the broadest and deepest compilation of PQ "stuff" out there. Couple that with a well keyed Google/Bing search and you can easily find a way to your data end point.

The book is well written and deserves higher praise than does the language, M. I'm an "Excel pro," and while Power Query has some handy features, I would never us it at work. If you want to be efficient manipulating data, your time is better spent working on your Excel, VBA, and SQL skills. Incidentally, when I couldn't get one of their examples to work I posted a question to the comments section of their web site, which is supposed to be "monitored by both authors." Three weeks later and there has been no reply, despite that being the only comment posted.

Good book on M, it successfully straddles the how and why. This may be the only definitive guide on M out there at the moment, I'm not sure how I got by without Power Query for as long as I have. There are some useful books on DAX (this is NOT a book on DAX), but don't overlook the role of pre-shaping and automating your data model. Power Query is one of those things that once you get it, you just get it. This was the first book I purchased on my recent journey into Power BI, and I'd do it all again. Bought the Kindle version, and after getting through it, I bought the physical book. It's that useful.

Having danced around Ken Puls' ExcelGuru.ca website in moments of Power Query need I felt it was time to get back to the basics and finally learn a solid foundation as opposed to jumbled pieces put together over time. The one thing that I will say about this book is there is a LOT of information packed into 226 pages from getting started to the much more advanced topics found in the later chapters. Several times my eyes were almost in disbelief at the potential of Power Query (Get & Transform) and how I could immediately start putting this into action at the day job. Having an earlier edition of the book I realized several times throughout that Microsoft's improvements have eliminated some of the more tedious steps of Power Query past. Both Ken and Miguel's overall tone throughout the book was also a testament to respecting their audience's Excel experience and going in depth only as needed to allow each lesson to continue to build on one another. I would highly recommend this book to anyone in a Data Analyst or Reporting Analyst role.

Much of learning about power query can be done by reference to video guidance and having a play with the various options available in the power query ribbon. However, this will only take you so far and once you get onto the more advance points around the structure of the language there are very little resources that pull things together in a coherent way. That's where I believe this book comes in and it takes the user through the more basic (but still more suited to a more advanced excel user) aspects of power query. It's worth noting at this point that the resources that the authors have provided are extremely useful, well put together and tie in with the screenshots within the book. The chapters are arranged so that advanced power query features sit towards the back of the book. Whilst these are useful you can get by very successfully with power query without them they do offer more features and would enable users to create power query spreadsheets that are more akin to 'solutions' rather than a mishmash of queries that have to be clicked in the right order. I've been through the book once to get a feel for it but I can see myself needing to go back through again, working through some of the examples in order to get the full benefit. Well done to Ken and Miguel!

Good book for beginners.

Prima boek om kennis te maken met de gevorderde kennis binnen Excel om data bewerkingen te doen. Duidelijke structuur en prima naslag.

Possui explicações importantes. Falta apenas mais exemplos reais práticos para usar lista etc. Mas vale muito a pena a compra.

Si trabajas mucho con Excel y te topas con tareas repetitivas para las cuales seguro tienes una macro o quisieras tener una, dale una oportunidad a Power Query. Se trata de un libro cuyos capítulos son ejemplos de cómo resolver tareas o situaciones cotidianas donde se debe transformar la info para dejarla limpia con miras a una tabla dinámica. Es muy rápido de leer por lo que aplicas lo aprendido al momento. La ventaja del Query es que te permite conectar a distintas fuentes de datos y dejar los pasos indicados para la transformación de datos sin importar (mucho) como vienen de origen. Puedes conectar con Sharepoints o Azure y obtener actualizaciones automáticas. Aquí es dondo dejamos atrás las macro. Muy recomendable para usuarios office 365 pues el ecosistema de apps se complementa. Adicionalmente, los autores tienen otros títulos relacionados a Power Pivot y Power Bi lo que les permite comparar Query vs estas herramientas. Es un libro muy completo.