Introduction

Data is only as powerful as the shape it’s in. Before dashboards tell compelling stories and visuals drive decisions, data must first be cleaned, structured, and trusted. In Power BI, this transformation happens in Power Query, the engine that converts raw, messy data into meaningful insights.

If you’re new to Power BI, one of the most important skills you can learn is data preparation. No matter how impressive your visuals look, poor-quality data will always produce poor insights. That’s why cleaning and transforming data is a critical step in every Power BI project.

Power Query enables you to clean, reshape, and prepare data before loading it into the data model.…