Solve the Formula.Firewall Error in Power Query

The Formula Firewall error is a data privacy error you might get when sharing Power Query Excel files and it's basically Excel's way of saying you have an external data source when it seems like you don't. One way to mitigate this is to change the privacy setting to ignore this message, but when you're collaborating with other, they might not feel comfortable doing this. The other option is to set up a bridge or staging querying. This involves getting into the M code, but it's not so bad. This video talks about the table that takes in user input on where the folder path is for a file but those detail instructions are in another video at https://youtu.be/ignTb_UozTw. This one will cover mostly on how to solve the Formula Firewall issue.

Share Power Query File - Formula.Firewall Error Workaround

When you're sharing files that use Power Query and it sources a data file from a separate workbook, you might come across multiple issues like the DataSource.Error or Formula.Firewall error message. A way to get around these issues is to ask the user you're working with to change or update a few settings. It's not too complicated so check out the video to learn how.

How to Fix the DataSource.Error Message in Power Query

If you're sharing or collaborating with other intermediate Power Query users and source data from large files, you don't want to send those large files back and forth if it doesn't change. Basically your transformation or analysis file is the changing item and when you share that file, the source for the data is going to change; hence you might get the dreaded DataSource.error message. There's a couple ways to deal with this error like replacing the source in the query steps and then refreshing. In this video, it'll cover a way to use the parameter feature in Power Query to set up a path to the source and reference that path in the query step.

Convert Multiple Line Records into Different Rows

Sometimes you get a list that's in a two column name value or attribute value format and need to split these multiline records into separate rows. If this were a small table you could do a copy/paste or create some formulas to pull out the name value pairs. If this were a recurring process you might even write some VBA. Well I'm no VBA guru but this can be done with Power Query and then be used again. If you get these type of tables often and have to perform these steps on a regular basis just overwrite or append the new data and refresh the query like it's magic! 🧙‍♂️

Combine Tables with Header Values in Different Rows

Excel can be used to to combine or append tables in multiple different worksheet tabs in the same workbook file. But there may also be a value that you'd want to preserve in those worksheets to use for a new column value in the combined output. The tables are all structured the same and have the same column headings but the worksheet tabs have the generic name (i.e, Sheet1 or Sheet2). The common field in each worksheet can be used as a value that categorizes the tables. One worksheet will be California data and another worksheet would be New York data. However there's a catch...the header for those state are in different rows for each sheet. If these were small data sets, then copy/paste and some column movements would suffice. However if these are large tables, you do this on a recurring basis or you had 10 or 20 worksheets in the file, it would be a chore. This is a great opportunity to use Power Query and this video will show how. This is a tip I learned from Gil Raviv's book. Get the book at https://amzn.to/2Zj9ADY

Use PowerPoint Zoom Feature to Make Landing Page Summary Slide

The Zoom feature can help you make a summary slide that acts like a landing page for your presentation. It's available only on Microsoft 365 subscription or PowerPoint 2019. It's helpful if you have a large presentation and wanted to have your audience come back to a summary or landing page slide the center on the overall topics, section or categories of the presentation. It's a neat feature that keeps an audience engages in the main messages of the presentations.

Revert a Report with Multiple Header and Total Fields to Proper Table

When you've received a report from someone it would be nice to do your own analysis of the data. However if it's already in some report table format with multiple header or row fields and multiple total or subtotal fields, you'd think that you'd have to do a lot of copy and paste to turn it back into a table so your could do some different pivot or crosstab analysis. With Power Query, you don't need to because the transformation can be done it quite easily and quickly.