Power Query: Power Query Online – Part 5

Welcome to our Power Query blog.  Today, I look at the shortcuts available in Power Query Online.

In the current series, I am looking at Power Query Online, which I have accessed from Power Apps:

Last week, I looked at the search feature from the main screen, which allows me to find any functionality without searching through the tabs.

Note that the shortcut for the Find option is ALT + Q:

In addition to using the find functionality to jump to the tool I want, there are other shortcuts that I can use in Power Query Online.  To find them, I go first to the ‘Help’ tab:

Along with other useful sources of data, which I will look at next time, there is a ‘Keyboard shortcuts’ button  in the ‘Help’ section.   At the time of writing, this button takes me to the Microsoft website in a new page on my browser:

Microsoft have added a warning about browsers:

It’s a sensible disclaimer, given that there are a finite number of shortcuts available.  If your chosen browser has assigned the shortcuts to another feature, it’s not going to work in Power Query Online.  Having accepted this, let’s move on to look at the first section of shortcuts, those for the Query Editor:

I am going to focus on the Windows Keyboard shortcuts.  It depends on what you tend to use most with Power Query, but for me the ‘Add custom column’ (CTRL + ALT + C) and ‘Advanced editor’ (CTRL + SHIFT + M) would be great.

Next up, Data Preview:

These shortcuts access functionality when the results of the query are shown using ‘Show data view’ and are dependent on what I have selected.  Below, I selected the top cell, and then used Page down to ‘Select the cell one page down’:

If you like using shortcuts to get around an Excel workbook, you’ll like these!

The next two sets of shortcuts are to do with specific features:

Editable grid is accessible when I am using the ‘Enter data’ or ‘Blank table’ tools:

The Multi-line text editor is available when creating a ‘Blank query’ or using the ‘Advanced editor’:

The ‘Diagram View’ options provide ways to quickly manipulate the view:

These shortcuts are active when I am using ‘Diagram view’:

Finally, the last section is for the Queries pane, and these are all reasonably intuitive:

It is useful to know these shortcuts exist, and it is great that they can be accessed from Power Query Online and viewed on a separate page on my browser.  I would love all of the shortcuts in the Query Editor section to be available in desktop Power Query, but I did find a useful one that does work – CTRL + E does indeed access ‘Add Column from Examples’:

Next time, I’ll continue looking the other resources available in Power Query Online.

Come back next time for more ways to use Power Query!