Power Query concatenation using &

**Dicken** · 11-14-2022, 10:31 AM

Hi,
have a question regarding joing dates or number and text in power Q;

If I have a date column and then create two more so;

   Date.Year(date)

and

 Date.MonthName([Date])

and then go to addcustomcolumn and join them

  [Year]&"-"&[Month] ,

But if I don't add these helper columns I seem to need to covert the year to text first;

Text.From(Date.Year([Date]))&"-"&Date.MonthName([Date]))

why? I can see that the DateYear does return a text value ( left side) , but if that's the case shouldn't it work within the concatenation?

Richard.

**romperstomper** · 11-14-2022, 10:33 AM

Date.Year returns a nullable number, not text.

**Dicken** · 11-14-2022, 10:45 AM

Yes, you're right just tried again, I don't know what I did but I did manage to join the two, Month Name and Year without converting to text,

Not sure what I did as I've deleted it in frustration to start again from scratch.

RD

**sandy666** · 11-14-2022, 11:00 AM

maybe try

    #"Extracted Year" = Table.TransformColumns(Source,{{"Year", Date.Year, Int64.Type}}),
    #"Extracted Month Name" = Table.TransformColumns(#"Extracted Year", {{"Month", each Date.MonthName(_), type text}}),
    #"Merged Columns" = Table.CombineColumns(Table.TransformColumnTypes(#"Extracted Month Name", {{"Year", type text}}, "en-GB"),{"Year", "Month"},Combiner.CombineTextByDelimiter("-", QuoteStyle.None),"Merged")

yearmonthname.png