By Hiran de Silva
There’s a strange and revealing contradiction making the rounds on LinkedIn, courtesy of a post by Alfio Auteri. His post praises Power Query in glowing terms—a move that, in today’s Excel influencer economy, practically guarantees applause, likes, and algorithmic validation from the big names: Leila Gharani, Mike Girvin, and their enthusiastic acolytes.
You want reach? Praise Power Query. It’s almost formulaic—post about how a task that used to take you five hours now takes five minutes thanks to Power Query, drop a few screenshots, maybe mention “from folder,” and boom: influencer engagement unlocked.
But it was a single dissenting comment on that post that sparked the anomaly worth unpacking. One reader dared to ask, “Shouldn’t you be using a planning tool?” And with that, we arrive at the rift between popularity and practicality, between what looks great in a demo and what actually scales in enterprise settings.
The Power Query Praise Machine — and the Contradiction It Conceals
Let’s start here: Power Query is undeniably clever. It lets you import data from various sources, organize it in a memory-based data model inside Excel, and do so with a user-friendly wizard that earns praise for its accessibility. This is not in dispute.
What is in dispute is the notion that Power Query represents the apex of enterprise Excel architecture. Because while users wax lyrical about how Power Query has changed their lives, Mark Proctor (another figure in the Excel ecosystem) insists that companies aren’t hiring for it, nor are they investing in training. Why?
Therein lies the contradiction.
If Power Query is so powerful, so practical, and so transformative… why isn’t management investing in it?
Either managers are too dim to see the value (unlikely), or Power Query’s value is overstated—specifically when it comes to building collaborative, scalable, enterprise-level systems.
Thought Experiment: Same Cake, Different Box
Let’s consider what makes Power Query so exciting for its fans:
- It introduces the idea of a data model—tables joined together with relationships, forming a semantic layer you can slice, filter, and report on.
- It makes importing data from multiple sources easy via a visual interface—folders of CSVs, Excel workbooks, web sources, databases.
- It helps consolidate and cleanse data before it hits the worksheet.
So far, so good. But now let’s test a little hypothesis.
What if you offered all these capabilities—data modeling, import automation, refreshable queries—but without calling it Power Query?
What if you presented a system built in Excel, connected to a relational database (say, Microsoft Access or SQL Server), with the following capabilities:
- Centralized data model shared across departments.
- Distributed reporting where multiple spreadsheets can refresh from the same source.
- Writeback capability—spreadsheets that don’t just read data, but update it.
- Scalable access control, auditability, and performance.
Would the Power Query crowd still cheer?
You’d expect a resounding yes—after all, isn’t that what they claim to want? But experience says no. The moment it’s revealed that these features come not from Power Query, but from good old ADO and a relational database, enthusiasm fizzles.
Some even go so far as to reject the solution on principle—because it’s not inside their beloved Power Query.
The “Only If It’s in Power Query” Syndrome
Let’s call this behavior what it is: a brand addiction. It’s not about the functionality. It’s about the badge. “Power Query” is the trending label that makes you look sharp, current, hireable, and on-message in the influencer economy.
So when you show someone a better, more scalable solution—one that achieves precisely what they’ve been asking for—but it’s not in Power Query, they demur.
They want the solution—but only if it comes in the box marked “Power Query.”
It’s like someone insisting they’ll only drive to Oxford if the car can also cross the English Channel to Brittany. You tell them there’s a perfectly good ferry. They say, no thanks—I’ll only go if the car itself can swim. Ludicrous, yes. But that’s how some Power Query loyalists respond to the idea of using Excel with a relational backend.
So, Who Would Care About Results Over Branding?
There are, thankfully, those who are not so caught up in the Power Query cult of personality. These are the people who care about outcomes:
- Business managers who want processes streamlined, costs cut, and accountability built-in.
- Systems thinkers and financial modelers who design solutions for real-world messiness, not textbook neatness.
- Transformation consultants who thrive on showing the “before” and “after” and letting the contrast do the talking.
- Any Excel user who’s ever had to reconcile five versions of the truth across disconnected spreadsheets and sees the hub-and-spoke light.
These professionals recognize that the real magic lies not in Power Query itself, but in what it’s trying to do—create structured, reusable dataflows.
And they know Excel could already do this—with ADO, SQL, and a centralized database—without the refresh failures, writeback impossibilities, and opaque M-code spaghetti that plague many Power Query solutions.
The Punchline: When the Answer Already Exists
The final irony is this:
The Power Query fans are shouting from rooftops about how amazing it would be to have shared, queryable, updatable data models…
…and when you show them it’s already possible in Excel with native tools, they look disappointed. Or confused. Or uninterested.
Why?
Because it’s not fashionable. It’s not part of the branding. It doesn’t get likes.
This isn’t a technical flaw—it’s a human one.
The Bigger Opportunity
And this is why this isn’t just a social media curiosity. It’s an enterprise opportunity.
Because in a world where Excel is being sold short, dumbed down, and boxed in by influencer marketing and cosmetic tutorials, those who do understand its true enterprise potential—who know how to build scalable, auditable, distributed systems with Access, SQL, and ADO—are sitting on a goldmine.
They are the ones who can walk into a meeting with management, solve a supposedly “complex” business problem in a week using tools everyone already owns, and leave with a permanent contract.
That’s the real transformation. Not a fancy UI or a thumbs-up from Mike Girvin.
Closing Thought
This thought experiment exposes something troubling, but also thrilling. Troubling in how the Excel conversation has been hijacked by social validation over substance. Thrilling because it means that for those who do see clearly, the field is wide open.
So, the next time someone raves about Power Query, just ask:
Would you still love it if it didn’t say “Power Query” on the tin?
And then watch the brand loyalty battle the business logic.
That, right there, is the Power Query Paradox.
Add comment