Extracting Complex Data from Websites - Excelerator BI

Extracting Complex Data from Websites

One thing I did a long time ago was set up my own forum called PowerPivot Forum. This forum is open to anyone to join and to ask questions and/or help others. If I have any spare time (decreasingly so these days), I help people out on the forum too.  It occurred to me that the forum must be a great source of insight into what people are interested in.  The posts on the forum include information about how many page views there have been for each topic as shown below.

I decided to extract the number of views for all the topics I have participated in on the forum, to find out what topics are most of interest.  From there I may choose to write some new blog posts and videos on the most viewed topics.  The problem however is that the information available in the forum is non-tabular data. But no worries, I used Power Query to extract the required data using a few of my tricks that I have developed and learnt over the last few years. The final output result is as shown below (just a few rows of over 500 rows in total).

Power Query Online Training

There is quite a lot involved in creating this query, so I decided to record a run through rather than document the steps one at a time.  The video is on my Power BI YouTube channel but also embedded below. You can download the sample workbook here.

Where to Learn More

I know a lot about Power Query. I have learnt by reading books, watching what others do, but most importantly I have taught myself by turning on the Formula Bar and learning from the UI.  This is exactly the same principle most of us use when learning to program with VBA in Excel.  In my online video training course, I share what I have learnt and also show you how you can use my techniques to become self sufficient in future learning with Power Query.  Check out my training if you want to Learn to Use Power Query like me.

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