Data Prep in Power Query: Data Type Change, Col Optimization, Feature Eng | The Analytics Flow

Before sending your data to the modeling canvas, you must ensure it is optimized, lightweight, and structured to answer business questions. In this fifth video of our crash course, we transition from basic cleaning into advanced data preparation and feature engineering inside Power Query. We start by performing a strict data audit, manually validating and changing data types across our combined tables to avoid model mismatch errors down the line. You will learn the performance benefits of column optimization as we ruthlessly remove unneeded columns, shrinking our overall file size and boosting report speed. Finally, we dive into feature engineering, creating entirely new columns derived from our existing data to unlock deeper analytical layers. By the end of this tutorial, your tables will be fully optimized, lean, and analysis-ready! #powerbi #powerquery #featureengineering #datacleaning #dataanalytics #theanalyticsflow