This video has been added to both the introductory and Advanced Power Query courses. For the introductory course. While you won't be editing the direct code, you will be writing custom formulas. Now since recording both of these courses, the power query editor in Excel has seen some significant changes and improvements. The most important of these has been the addition of Intel a text to the various points of code interaction. This course was originally written and recorded prior to these updates, so any videos will show the code being written without the help and support of the Intel text.

This means that you'll see some different behavior as you write and edit your own code and formulas. So what is Intel text? And how will it impact the course? If you've ever written code and pretty much any code editor you've probably seen or used and teletext when writing that code out Intel a text will color specific keywords and provide helpful pop up information when you begin writing certain types of code, such as function names, input details, and it will also typically provide a brief tooltip describing the function that you're currently using. We're going to look at a function here that you'll write later in this course the check characters for word. The first thing that Intel Tex does for us is it highlights specific types of words, we can see that let in each and true are all highlighted in blue.

This coloring indicates that each of these is a special keyword. We can also see different words that are highlighted in a maroon color, found first characters, words and so forth. Each of these are static strings. That is they're not variables, functions or keywords. As we can see, this makes our queries far easier to read and interpret the bland text editor that we had before. While the improved readability is nice, it's hardly the defining impact of and teletext throughout the course, you will end up referring to the Power Query Language reference on the web.

This will still be necessary for some functions when you really aren't quite sure what you're looking for. But in many cases, the intelligent text will help guide you to the solution you need. For example, let's say that I know I needed some type of date computation. Previously, I'd have gone out to the reference on the web and looked for the date functions. Now I can simply type date dot. Once I do this, the list that shows up contains all of the functions associated with the date prefix.

So we can scroll through and look for the one that we need, or at least one that sounds like the one we think we need. Not only do we have these functions, but we can select the one that we want. hit the Tab key on our keyboard, and the rest of the typing is done for us. As with any function, we need to open our parentheses to use it. Doing so does Two things that did not get done before one, both the opening and closing parentheses are added. So you should have fewer cases of hanging parentheses, too, we have a pop up that will describe the function along with the necessary inputs.

Within that tooltip, we can see that one of the inputs is underlined. This will indicate which of the inputs we're currently editing, I can input a value here, then add a comma, and then see that our tooltip updates to indicate that we're working on the next input. When I move my cursor back across the comma, the tooltip changes again so that we can easily figure out where we're at within our function as we edit it. This is very useful in the advanced editor, but it also applies within the custom column editor and the formula bar. Clicking into different queries and looking at each step, we can see that the formula bar has the color coding highlights as well. Similarly, if we go to add custom column, we can write a simple formula with an if statement and functions to see that the color coding and the tooltip support shows up here as well.

Typing if date dot now, I can find date time dot local now by scrolling through my options, and hit the tab to get the desired functionality. As you can see, the search function is contextual and it'll take into account both sides of your object request. I can then add my parentheses to this at it then true else false. And while the function doesn't make sense, you can see how the Intel text editor can be used to help you find the code you need with some basic context clues, and we'll guide you through setting up proper keywords and functions.