Tagline: Learn the principle, not just the button.
By Hiran de Silva
In the world of Excel, Power Query has become a kind of poster child for “modern Excel” innovation. It’s visually appealing, easy to learn, and offers great value—for the individual user. But what happens when the limits of Power Query are reached? Do we simply throw up our hands and say, “We can’t do it with Excel”? Or is there a more mature path forward?
The Real Issue: Not Power Query, But How We Think
The problem isn’t Power Query itself. It’s what Power Query represents: a tool-first mindset. Most Excel learners today are taught tools as if they were ends in themselves. “Learn Power Query,” they’re told, “and you can do anything.”
But when a tool like Power Query fails to scale—when it can’t handle live collaboration, real-time updates from multiple departments, or seamless data writes back to a central database—we’re left stranded. Not because the challenge is beyond Excel. But because our understanding of Excel was built on features, not on principles.
From Principle to Practice: A Better Way to Learn Excel
What if we reversed the learning journey?
- Start with the Principle: Understand the need—consolidation, transformation, validation, reconciliation. These are business problems, not button-pressing exercises.
- Understand the Generic Approach: Know how Excel as a platform (not a feature set) can address these challenges. Think client-server, not cut-paste.
- Then Reach for a Tool: Maybe it’s Power Query. Maybe it’s VBA with ADO. Maybe it’s an Access database with SQL integration. Excel doesn’t end where Power Query ends. It begins where problem-solving begins.
This principle-first approach empowers you to pivot when Power Query runs out of road. Instead of saying, “Excel can’t do this,” you’ll say, “That feature can’t—but Excel itself can. Let me show you how.”
Enterprise Context: Where Power Query Falls Short
Power Query is engineered for a single user working on a single file. That’s fine for one-off reporting or local cleaning tasks. But in enterprise systems, you need:
- Shared, writable data models
- Live user collaboration
- Role-based input and review
- Auditability and data control
- Central reconciliation and process ownership
Try building this with Power Query alone, and you’ll soon find yourself tangled in refresh errors, writeback impossibilities, and governance nightmares.
But that doesn’t mean Excel is finished. It just means you’ve outgrown the toy tools and are ready for professional architecture: hub-and-spoke spreadsheets, ADO integration, relational database backends, and controlled PUT/GET workflows.
Don’t Be Held Hostage by a Feature
If Excel learners are trained to think beyond the interface, beyond the drag-and-drop, and toward design principles and system thinking, then hitting the limits of Power Query won’t stop them. It’ll redirect them—into more powerful, scalable, and sustainable solutions.
Conclusion: Power Query is the Beginning, Not the End
There’s a saying in architecture: form follows function. In Excel, tools should follow principles. Power Query is a fantastic example of functional form—but it mustn’t be confused with the principle itself.
If we teach Excel users to start with the principle—of transformation, consolidation, reconciliation—they will never be boxed in by a feature’s limits. They will adapt. They will scale. And they will innovate.
Because at the enterprise level, Excel doesn’t stop working. It just starts needing better design.
DEMONSTRATION
Consolidation challenge posted on LinkedIn.
In this challenge, I asked how the consolidation of 400 budgets from around the world can be achieved with Power Query. There were dozens of techniques and demos from many Excel experts. It was indeed possible to consolidate 400 budget spreadsheets in a matter of seconds.
However, there’s a problem. What was once a live real-time process (necessary for several levels of management to engage on this company-wide exercise) albeit with those nasty external links, the workflow now has become a batch process that needs someone to run, with some manual work to make it happen. Furthermore, the resulting reports have now become a pivot table rather than the business reports that the managers were familiar with. These two alternations are a deal breaker unacceptable to top management.
However, it need not be like that.
The limitations of Power Query does not stop us from learning from what worked in Power Query.
We learned from Power Query that the data model is what eliminates the need for external links. That’s great!
But, the problem is that, when implemented with Power Query, the data model is inside the workbook. What if the data model sits outside, centrally, and independent of all the workbooks?
Excel is already engineered to do this natively. So why try to implement it with Power Query?
Conclusion
The greatest power of Power Query is not what Power Query is – but how we can learn business-process-reengineering-principles from it that we didn’t know before.
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