Where is Merge Query in Power BI?

Trying to combine data from different tables in Power BI can feel like putting together a puzzle, but a feature called Merge Query is the powerful tool you need. It allows you to stitch your data sources together to create a single, comprehensive view. This guide will show you exactly where to find Merge Queries, how they work, and how you can use them to answer bigger questions about your business.

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What are Merge Queries in Power BI? (A Simple Explanation)

If you're familiar with VLOOKUP in Excel, you'll feel right at home with Merge Queries. Think of it as VLOOKUP on steroids. A merge operation takes two separate tables and joins them together into one based on a shared column of information, like a ProductID, Email Address, or OrderID.

For example, imagine you have one table with customer contact information (name, email) and another table with their order history (order date, order total). Both tables contain the customer's Email Address. By merging these two tables on the Email Address column, you can create a single, wider table that shows each customer's name alongside all of their order details. This lets you analyze spending patterns for individual customers, something that was impossible when the data was separate.

In short, merging lets you enrich your data. It adds context and detail by combining related information from different sources, creating a much more powerful dataset for your analysis and visualizations.

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Where to Find Merge Queries in Power Query Editor

The Merge Queries feature isn't on the main Power BI Desktop screen, it lives inside the Power Query Editor, which is the data transformation engine for Power BI. Here’s a step-by-step guide to locating it:

1. Open the Power Query Editor: From your main Power BI Desktop window, go to the Home tab on the top ribbon. In the "Queries" section, click on the Transform Data button. This will launch the Power Query Editor in a new window.
2. Locate the 'Combine' Group: Inside the Power Query Editor, make sure you're on the Home tab of its ribbon.
3. Find Merge Queries: Look to the right side of the ribbon for a group called "Combine." Inside this group, you'll see the Merge Queries button. It has a little dropdown arrow next to it.

When you click the dropdown, you'll see two options:

• Merge Queries: This option merges another table into the table you currently have selected. It modifies your existing query. This can be quick, but for learning purposes, it’s sometimes safer to use the other option.
• Merge Queries as New: This choice creates a brand-new, third query (or table) that contains the result of your merge. It leaves your two original tables untouched. This is the recommended option for beginners because it keeps your original data clean and makes it easier to troubleshoot if something goes wrong.

A Step-by-Step Example: Merging Sales and Product Data

Let's walk through a common business scenario. You have e-commerce data in two separate tables:

• A Sales table containing TransactionID, ProductID, and UnitsSold.
• A Products table containing ProductID, ProductName, and ProductPrice.

Our goal is to calculate the total revenue for each transaction, but we can't do that with the tables separated. We need to merge them to bring the ProductPrice into the Sales table.

Step 1: Open Power Query and Your Data

First, make sure both your Sales and Products tables are loaded into Power BI. Then, open the Power Query Editor by clicking Transform Data from the Home tab.

Step 2: Choose 'Merge Queries as New'

With any of your queries selected in the left pane, go to the Home ribbon, click the dropdown for Merge Queries, and select Merge Queries as New.

This will open the Merge dialog window.

Step 3: Configure the Merge Window

This is where you tell Power Query how to combine your tables.

• From the top dropdown menu, select your first table. In our case, this is the Sales table.
• From the bottom dropdown menu, select your second table, which is the Products table.
• Now, identify the common column. Click on the ProductID column header in the Sales table preview, and then click on the ProductID column header in the Products table preview. You'll see them both highlight, and Power BI will tell you how many rows match at the bottom of the window.

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Step 4: Select the 'Join Kind'

The "Join Kind" dropdown tells Power BI how to combine the rows. While there are six types, you’ll use these two most often:

• Left Outer (Default): This gives you all the rows from the first (top) table and only the matching rows from the second (bottom) table. This is perfect for our example, as we want to keep all our sales records and just add product details to them.
• Inner: This gives you only the rows that have a match in both tables. Any sales transaction for a ProductID that doesn't exist in the Products table would be excluded.

For this scenario, we'll stick with the default Left Outer join and click OK.

Step 5: Expand the New Column

You’ll now see your new, merged query (likely named Merge1 by default). It looks just like your Sales table but has one extra column at the end named Products. Each cell in this column simply says "[Table]". Don't worry, this is correct!

To finish the merge, you need to expand this table column to pull in the specific information you want.

• Click the expand icon (two arrows pointing in opposite directions) on the right side of the Products column header.
• A dropdown list will appear showing all the columns from the Products table. Check the boxes for the columns you want to add, which are ProductName and ProductPrice.
• At the bottom of this little window, uncheck the box that says "Use original column name as prefix." This prevents your new columns from being named Products.ProductName and instead just names them ProductName, which is cleaner.
• Click OK.

Your table now has the ProductName and ProductPrice columns added to every matching sales transaction record!

Step 6: Use Your New Data (Bonus Step)

With the price and quantity information now in the same table, you can create a total revenue column. Go to the Add Column tab in the Power Query Editor and click Custom Column. Name the new column "Revenue" and enter this simple formula:

=[UnitsSold] * [ProductPrice]

Click OK, and you've successfully created a new, valuable metric on the fly.

Step 7: Close & Apply

Finally, go back to the Home tab of the Power Query Editor and click the Close & Apply button. Your new merged table will now be loaded into your Power BI data model, ready to be used in dashboards and reports.

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Common Merge Query Scenarios

The concept of merging data applies to countless business scenarios. Here are a few examples to get you thinking:

• Marketing Analytics: Merge Facebook Ads campaign data (with Campaign Name) with website session data from Google Analytics (with Campaign Name) to see how many site visitors your ad campaigns are driving.
• Sales Performance: Combine a Sales Reps table (with RepID and RepName) with a Daily Sales table (RepID and SalesAmount) to create a sales leaderboard and analyze performance per rep.
• E-commerce Funnels: Merge Shopify order data with Klaviyo email campaign data on the Customer Email to see which email blasts are leading to actual purchases.

Tips and Best Practices for Merging Queries

• Check Your Data Types: The columns you join on must have the same data type. You can't merge a "Text" column with a "Whole Number" column. You can easily change data types in Power Query by clicking the icon on the left of a column header.
• Clean Data First: Extra spaces or inconsistent casing (Product-101 vs product-101) can prevent matches. Use the Trim and Lowercase transformations (found under the 'Transform' tab) on your key columns before merging to ensure clean joins.
• Filter Before Merging: If you're working with massive tables, merging can be slow. If you only need data from the last year, apply a Date Filter step to your tables before the merge step. This reduces the amount of data Power Query has to process, speeding everything up.

Final Thoughts

Merging queries in Power BI is a fundamental-yet-powerful skill that allows you to break down data silos and build a complete picture of your business. By heading into the Power Query Editor and using the "Merge Queries" feature, you can combine tables from virtually any source, add new context to your data, and unlock much deeper insights.

While mastering Power BI is an effective way to handle data, the process of connecting sources, transforming data, and building out reports from scratch takes time and dedication. For businesses that need insights faster, our approach at Graphed is to automate this entire workflow. You can connect your marketing and sales platforms with a few clicks, and instead of manually performing merges and adding custom columns, you simply ask in plain English for what you need - for instance, "Create a line chart of Shopify revenue vs. Facebook Ads spend for this quarter." Our AI builds the report in seconds, keeping it updated in real time so you can spend less time wrangling data and more time acting on it.