10 books like Master Your Data with Power Query in Excel and Power BI

By Ken Puls, Miguel Escobar,

Here are 10 books that Master Your Data with Power Query in Excel and Power BI fans have personally recommended if you like Master Your Data with Power Query in Excel and Power BI. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Cleaning Excel Data With Power Query Straight to the Point

Bill Jelen Author Of Power Excel 2019 with MrExcel: Master Pivot Tables, Subtotals, VLOOKUP, Power Query, Dynamic Arrays & Data Analysis

From my list on to go from Excel to Power Query and Power BI.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been running the MrExcel website since 1998 and have written 66 books about Excel. I am an Excel generalist – I know a fair amount about almost every aspect of Excel. But I respect the specialists who become experts on one part of Excel and offer deep knowledge dives into those portions of Excel. Cleaning data with Power Query, calculating “impossible” calculations with DAX, and then presenting them on interactive dashboards are some of the deep dives that you will learn on this list.

Bill's book list on to go from Excel to Power Query and Power BI

Bill Jelen Why did Bill love this book?

If you just want to find out if Power Query is for you, this short book, written by the entertaining host of the Excel On Fire YouTube channel will show you what is possible using Power Query. Oz will show you the types of everyday problems that can be solved using the Get & Transform section of the Data tab in Excel. Once you get a taste of what is possible, you will be ready to dive in with Ken Puls’ book.

By Oz du Soleil,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Cleaning Excel Data With Power Query Straight to the Point as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Author Oz Du Soleil's area of frustration with Excel is cleaning data. From his earliest days with Excel, he has found himself constantly needing to fix names that are ALLCAPS, peel addresses away from phone numbers, and fixing all the many other things that prevent data from being useful. In this intro to Power Query, Oz shows you five core techniques in Excel Power Query: Splitting data, Filling blanks, Joining data sets, grouping and summarizing, and adding columns using Column From Examples.


Book cover of The Absolute Guide to Dashboarding and Reporting with Power Bi: How to Design and Create a Financial Dashboard with Power Bi - End to End

Bill Jelen Author Of Power Excel 2019 with MrExcel: Master Pivot Tables, Subtotals, VLOOKUP, Power Query, Dynamic Arrays & Data Analysis

From my list on to go from Excel to Power Query and Power BI.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been running the MrExcel website since 1998 and have written 66 books about Excel. I am an Excel generalist – I know a fair amount about almost every aspect of Excel. But I respect the specialists who become experts on one part of Excel and offer deep knowledge dives into those portions of Excel. Cleaning data with Power Query, calculating “impossible” calculations with DAX, and then presenting them on interactive dashboards are some of the deep dives that you will learn on this list.

Bill's book list on to go from Excel to Power Query and Power BI

Bill Jelen Why did Bill love this book?

Kasper DeJonge works at Microsoft on the Power Query team. Before joining Microsoft, he was a data analyst, just like you. In this book, Kasper walks a data analyst through the steps of modelling your Excel data and getting it published on a Power BI dashboard. Along the way, his examples are designed to get you up to speed with the important aspects of Power BI.

By Kasper De Jonge,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Absolute Guide to Dashboarding and Reporting with Power Bi as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Written by a member of Microsoft's Power BI team, this book provides a practical step by step guide on creating a financial dashboard using Power BI desktop and the PowerBI.com service. The book contains 6 chapters:
Introduction. Here I introduce the book, business intelligence and provide some history on Power BI Understanding Dashboards and Report. Here we talk about what dashboards and reports are and how they are used in Power BI. Finally we talk about how to decide what to put on your reports and dashboards. Collecting and preparing data. Here we install Power BI desktop, import data into…


Book cover of Supercharge Power BI: Power BI is Better When You Learn To Write DAX

Bill Jelen Author Of Power Excel 2019 with MrExcel: Master Pivot Tables, Subtotals, VLOOKUP, Power Query, Dynamic Arrays & Data Analysis

From my list on to go from Excel to Power Query and Power BI.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been running the MrExcel website since 1998 and have written 66 books about Excel. I am an Excel generalist – I know a fair amount about almost every aspect of Excel. But I respect the specialists who become experts on one part of Excel and offer deep knowledge dives into those portions of Excel. Cleaning data with Power Query, calculating “impossible” calculations with DAX, and then presenting them on interactive dashboards are some of the deep dives that you will learn on this list.

Bill's book list on to go from Excel to Power Query and Power BI

Bill Jelen Why did Bill love this book?

Have you ever built a pivot table in Excel? They are great at summarizing data. But they are lousy at answering certain questions. When your manager asks for anything slightly complicated, the Pivot Table Calculated Field is destined to fail. 

The Microsoft team who built the Power Pivot calculation engine realized that Calculated Fields were the weak point of pivot tables. They created an amazing new formula language that could let you answer the hard questions like how are we doing on same-store sales through the first two weekends of December?

The formula language – Data Analysis Expressions – or DAX is powerful but confusing. Matt Allington, another former data analyst has figured out how to use DAX to come up with all of those industry-standard calculations that he used to need as a manager at Coca-Cola. 

He walks you up the DAX learning curve in this book.

By Matt Allington,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Supercharge Power BI as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Data analysis expressions (DAX) is the formula language of Power BI. Learning the DAX language is key to empower Power BI users so they can take advantage of these new Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities. This volume clearly explains the concepts of DAX while at the same time offering hands-on practice to engage the reader and help new knowledge stick. This third edition has been updated for the new Power BI Ribbon interface while still providing a bridge for readers wanting to learn DAX in the Power BI, Power Pivot, or Excel.


Book cover of Power Pivot and Power BI: The Excel User's Guide to DAX, Power Query, Power BI & Power Pivot in Excel 2010-2016

Bill Jelen Author Of Power Excel 2019 with MrExcel: Master Pivot Tables, Subtotals, VLOOKUP, Power Query, Dynamic Arrays & Data Analysis

From my list on to go from Excel to Power Query and Power BI.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been running the MrExcel website since 1998 and have written 66 books about Excel. I am an Excel generalist – I know a fair amount about almost every aspect of Excel. But I respect the specialists who become experts on one part of Excel and offer deep knowledge dives into those portions of Excel. Cleaning data with Power Query, calculating “impossible” calculations with DAX, and then presenting them on interactive dashboards are some of the deep dives that you will learn on this list.

Bill's book list on to go from Excel to Power Query and Power BI

Bill Jelen Why did Bill love this book?

Rob Collie was a pioneer at Microsoft. After leaving the Excel team, he helped architect the tools that would become Power Pivot and Power BI. He left Microsoft and started his own consultancy, helping big companies answer important questions in just a few hours with Power Pivot.

His books are the best-selling books in the category. 

While Matt Allington will get you up to speed, Rob will explain every nuance of Power Pivot, DAX, and Power BI.

By Rob Collie, Avichal Singh,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Power Pivot and Power BI as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Microsoft PowerPivot is a free add-on to Excel from Microsoft that allows users to produce new kinds of reports and analyses that were simply impossible before, and this book is the first to tackle DAX formulas, the core capability of PowerPivot, from the perspective of the Excel audience. Written by the world's foremost PowerPivot blogger and practitioner, the book's concepts and approach are introduced in a step-by-step manner tailored to the learning style of Excel users everywhere. The techniques presented allow users to produce, in hours or even minutes, results that formerly would have taken entire teams weeks or months…


Book cover of Kafka in Action

Magnus Larsson Author Of Microservices with Spring Boot 3 and Spring Cloud: Build resilient and scalable microservices using Spring Cloud, Istio, and Kubernetes

From my list on mastering Java and Spring-based microservices.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for developing production-ready, cooperating microservices began in 2008 when I first started assisting customers in creating distributed systems—long before the term “microservices” was coined. During that time, I faced significant challenges, including grappling with the “Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing”. Since then, I’ve dedicated most of my career to deepening my understanding of these complexities and finding ways to address them through robust architecture, design patterns, and the right tools.

Magnus' book list on mastering Java and Spring-based microservices

Magnus Larsson Why did Magnus love this book?

Apache Kafka is the industry standard for real-time event streaming, an essential component for large-scale, high-performance microservice ecosystems.

Despite being new to Kafka when I read this book, it quickly brought me up to speed on key concepts that underpin its scalability and real-time capabilities, such as the commit log, topic partitions, and consumer groups. The book also introduces other critical Kafka features like the schema registry, Kafka Connect, and stream processing with Kafka Streams and ksqlDB. The practical examples provided were straightforward to apply and adapt to my own use cases.

By Dylan Scott, Viktor Gamov, Dave Klein

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Kafka in Action as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Kafka in Action is a practical, hands-on guide to building Kafka-based data pipelines. Filled with real-world use cases and scenarios, this book probes Kafka's most common use cases, ranging from simple logging through managing streaming data systems for message routing, analytics, and more.

In systems that handle big data, streaming data, or fast data, it's important to get your data pipelines right. Apache Kafka is a wicked-fast distributed streaming platform that operates as more than just a persistent log or a flexible message queue.

Key Features

* Understanding Kafka's concepts

* Implementing Kafka as a message queue

* Setting up…


Book cover of Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

Yevgeniy Brikman Author Of Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery: A Hands-On Guide to Deploying and Managing Software in Production

From my list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent more than a decade working on infrastructure, from my early days at LinkedIn, where we had to do a massive DevOps transformation to save the company, to co-founding Gruntwork, where I had the opportunity to work with hundreds of companies on their software delivery practices. From all of this, I can say the following with certainty: the DevOps best practices that a handful of the top tech companies have figured out are not filtering down to the rest of the industry. This is making the entire software industry slower, less effective, and less secure—and I see it as my mission to fix that.

Yevgeniy's book list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery

Yevgeniy Brikman Why did Yevgeniy love this book?

This is the best overview of data storage and distributed systems—two key concepts for building almost any piece of software today—that I've seen anywhere. Martin does a wonderful job of taking a massive body of research and distilling complicated concepts and difficult trade-offs down to a level anyone can understand.

I learned a lot about replication, partitioning, linearizability, locking, write skew, phantoms, transactions, event logs, and more. I'm also a big fan of the final chapter, The Future of Data Systems, which covers ideas such as "unbundling the database", end-to-end event streams, and an important discussion on ethics in programming and data systems.

By Martin Kleppmann,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Designing Data-Intensive Applications as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Data is at the center of many challenges in system design today. Difficult issues need to be figured out, such as scalability, consistency, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability. In addition, we have an overwhelming variety of tools, including NoSQL datastores, stream or batch processors, and message brokers. What are the right choices for your application? How do you make sense of all these buzzwords? In this practical and comprehensive guide, author Martin Kleppmann helps you navigate this diverse landscape by examining the pros and cons of various technologies for processing and storing data. Software keeps changing, but the fundamental principles remain…


Book cover of Database Internals: A Deep-Dive Into How Distributed Data Systems Work

Tomasz Lelek Author Of Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs: How to make good programming decisions

From my list on big data processing ecosystem.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am motivated by working on products that many people use. I've been a part of companies that deliver products impacting millions of people. To achieve it, I am working in the Big Data ecosystem and striving to simplify it by contributing to Dremio's Data LakeHouse solution. I worked on projects using Spark, HDFS, Cassandra, and Kafka technologies. I have been working in the software engineering industry for ten years now, and I've tried to share my experience and lessons learned in the Software Mistakes and Tradeoffs book, hoping that it will allow current and the next generation of engineers to create better software, leading to more happy users.

Tomasz's book list on big data processing ecosystem

Tomasz Lelek Why did Tomasz love this book?

The Database Internals will allow you to go one step further in your understanding of how distributed databases work.

The author has a lot of experience with one of the most successful distributed databases - Apache Cassandra and shares his knowledge about low-level details and internals of distributed databases.

By Alex Petrov,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Database Internals as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When it comes to choosing, using, and maintaining a database, understanding its internals is essential. But with so many distributed databases and tools available today, it's often difficult to understand what each one offers and how they differ. With this practical guide, Alex Petrov guides developers through the concepts behind modern database and storage engine internals.

Throughout the book, you'll explore relevant material gleaned from numerous books, papers, blog posts, and the source code of several open source databases. These resources are listed at the end of parts one and two. You'll discover that the most significant distinctions among many…


Book cover of MrExcel 2022: Boosting Excel

Mary S. Schaeffer Author Of 127 Best Practices for Accounts Payable

From my list on to build excellence in accounting and finance.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m obsessed with spreading the word about best practices when it comes to the accounts payable function. It’s a lot more complicated than you might imagine – if you want to avoid fraud, excess costs, duplicate payments, problems with the IRS, etc. I regularly speak at both online and live events. As the host of the AP Now YouTube channel, I’m able to share opinions, interview industry thought leaders, and share the latest business intelligence needed to run an efficient, cost-effective accounts payable and payment function. I’ve written over 20 business books, most of them focusing on various aspects of the accounts payable function.

Mary's book list on to build excellence in accounting and finance

Mary S. Schaeffer Why did Mary love this book?

It goes without saying that every accounting and finance professional should be skilled when it comes to Excel.

When looking for tips and tricks to take Excel skills to the next level, I turn to the man, a Microsoft MVP, who has written over 60 books on the topic, taught thousands of seminars on the issue and is known as MrExcel. This book shares information, the "aha" tips that uncover secret methods in Excel.

By Bill Jelen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked MrExcel 2022 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Inspiring Excel tips designed to save 100 hours per year.

Originally designed for Bill Jelen's live Power Excel seminars, the target audience already uses Excel 40 hours a week. These tips are the "aha" tips that uncover secret methods in Excel. The book covers general Excel functions, pivot tables, and formulas such as VLOOKUP and the new XLOOKUP. It introduces elements of modern Excel such as the Power Pivot Data Model and cleaning data with Power Query. Updated annually, this edition for 2022 adds information on collaboration features, LET and LAMBDA functions, amazing new data types, dynamic array formulas, and…


Book cover of MrExcel 23: The Greatest Excel Tips of All Time

Mary S. Schaeffer Author Of 127 Best Practices for Accounts Payable

From my list on to build excellence in accounting and finance.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m obsessed with spreading the word about best practices when it comes to the accounts payable function. It’s a lot more complicated than you might imagine – if you want to avoid fraud, excess costs, duplicate payments, problems with the IRS, etc. I regularly speak at both online and live events. As the host of the AP Now YouTube channel, I’m able to share opinions, interview industry thought leaders, and share the latest business intelligence needed to run an efficient, cost-effective accounts payable and payment function. I’ve written over 20 business books, most of them focusing on various aspects of the accounts payable function.

Mary's book list on to build excellence in accounting and finance

Mary S. Schaeffer Why did Mary love this book?

Because I believe it is critical for all accounting and finance professionals to be as proficient as possible with Excel, I’ve included a second Excel book on this list.

This about-to-be-published book represents the latest iteration of MrExcel LX - The Holy Grail of Excel Tips published in 2019. Without a doubt, like his many other books, it will provide tips and tricks to help the audience perfect their much-needed Excel skills.

By Bill Jelen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked MrExcel 23 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Excel tips to skyrocket white-collar productivity.

Originally designed for Bill Jelen's live Power Excel seminars, the target audience already uses Excel 40 hours a week. These tips are the "aha" tips that uncover secret methods in Excel. The book covers general Excel functions, pivot tables, and formulas such as VLOOKUP and the new XLOOKUP. It introduces elements of modern Excel such as the Power Pivot Data Model and cleaning data with Power Query. Updated annually, this edition for 2021 adds information on LET and LAMBDA functions, amazing new data types, dynamic array formulas, and more.


Book cover of R For Dummies

Tilman M. Davies Author Of The Book of R: A First Course in Programming and Statistics

From my list on intro to programming and data science with R.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an applied statistician and academic researcher/lecturer at New Zealand’s oldest university – the University of Otago. R facilitates everything I do – research, academic publication, and teaching. It’s the latter part of my job that motivated my own book on R. From first-year statistics students who have never seen R to my own Ph.D. students using R to implement novel and highly complex statistical methods and models, my experience is that all ultimately love the ease with which the R language permits exploration, visualisation, analysis, and inference of one’s data. The ever-growing need in today’s society for skilled statisticians and data scientists means there's never been a better time to learn this essential language.

Tilman's book list on intro to programming and data science with R

Tilman M. Davies Why did Tilman love this book?

A gentle yet detailed book for beginner programmers. A great book for those who know they'll be getting up to some programming in R but who are very new to programming in general. The book's chapters are filled with content on the syntax, usage, and 'best practice' guidelines. The examples guide the reader in a step-by-step fashion to maximise understanding. An especially unique chapter providing examples on things you can do in R that you might've otherwise done in Excel is one of its stand-out features.

By Andrie De Vries, Joris Meys,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked R For Dummies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Mastering R has never been easier Picking up R can be tough, even for seasoned statisticians and data analysts. R For Dummies, 2nd Edition provides a quick and painless way to master all the R you'll ever need. Requiring no prior programming experience and packed with tons of practical examples, step-by-step exercises, and sample code, this friendly and accessible guide shows you how to know your way around lists, data frames, and other R data structures, while learning to interact with other programs, such as Microsoft Excel. You'll learn how to reshape and manipulate data, merge data sets, split and…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Power Pivot, Microsoft Power BI, and big data?

Power Pivot 7 books
Big Data 29 books