Forum Discussion
Excel 365 for Mac - Get & Transform/Power Query functionality
Hi Dears,
Recently switched over from Windows to MacOS, not knowing the versions of Excel 365 for both the OSes are not the same. More or less immediately ran into issues when trying to find the Get & Transform functionality on the MacOS - it simply was not there. Spending a week on researching the internet learned this functionality is not - yet - available for MacOS.
From what I have been able to learn, the newest Excel 365 does offer the option to refresh existing queries - queries created on a Windows machine, though also learned according to Microsoft this is rather "phase 1" and we should expect more to come.
Looking at the amount of users voted for getting this feature fully supported on MacOS I am confident this is something that is continuously being worked on by Microsoft.
Seeing as this was stated somewhere in 2019 it does make me curious to understand where Microsoft stands now in regards to further rolling out this functionality for MacOS.
Hoping I can get more details on things such as:
- Can Microsoft provide transparancy regarding their roadmap? What can we expect by when - and what not?
- Any workarounds available to avoid having to have a Windows OS to be needed?
- Other tips?
See below couple of things I was able to find on Microsoft.com:
Guy Hunkin, Program Manager at Microsoft writes an article in October 2019 about the introduction of the ability of refreshing existing queries in Excel for MacOS. Also providing feedback saying that "the goal is to support full query authoring on Mac. As you can understand, this is an expensive project and we adopted a staged delivery plan - we aim to release valuable functionality to the users as soon as we are done with coding and testing"
Question from me: Can Microsoft provide an update on this? Where do you stand now. Release roadmap available? Other information you can share?
Hope this helps others to track status of this functionality for MacOS as well!
Wishing everyone a good weekend!
UY-SCUTI I went the opposite way. A long time Mac user, realising that Excel for Mac wasn't really living up to my needs. I had an MS365 Business subscription that allowed me to install the full Office package on up to 5 PC's and/or Macs, plus a bunch of mobile devices. I bought Parallels and W10 and happily run the full Excel version on a virtual Windows machine, on one of my Macs, a rather old MacBook Pro. Works good enough for me. If you have a newer Mac, it's going to run even better, I suspect. At the same time, running Excel on two more Macs and a Huwawei laptop (all under the same subscription), though with the limited functionality (as you recently discovered) on both Macs.
18 Replies
Gal_ZivoniMicrosoft
Hi everyone,
I'm glad to update that Power Query Editor is generally available in Excel for Microsoft 365 for Mac running version 16.69 (23010700) or later.
Gal
Excel Team- Inbar_Privman
Just wanted to let you know that we released another phase, and you can now import data from local files with Power Query in Excel for Mac! For more information please see this announcement.
It's now been nearly a year since the last update on this topic. The import from web feature still requires us to go through the Word document voodoo, saved as txt, renamed to .iqy, only to get the Basic import features from Windows.
We can still not transform the data, select the columns to import into a table, set the data type, etc.
We cannot use the advanced functions to log in using an API.
I know that MacOS is a competitor to Windows, but when I buy Office, I expect to get Office. Not a milked down version of it. It's the same with OneNote and PowerPoint..
- Inbar_Privman
AlainL123 thank you for your comment.
Our team is currently working to introduce import from additional sources and transform data with Query Editor; however, there is no specific timeline for this as of yet. For further news, you can follow this site.
Please see the following article for more information about Power Query support in Excel for Mac: Import data in Excel for Mac (Power Query) (microsoft.com).
Inbar
Excel Team
Just in case, roadmap is here Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365. If functionality is not included here nobody will share concrete plans for it. Power Query for Mac is not included.
Another related links are about data model (Power Pivot) on Mac Add PowerPivot to Mac excel – Welcome to Excel’s Suggestion Box! (uservoice.com) , not planned at all.
And PQ on Mac Add support for Get & Transform (formerly Power Query) – Welcome to Excel’s Suggestion Box! (uservoice.com)
IMHO, if you prefer Mac hardware and would like to have full functional Excel, install Windows on the top and work in it with such tasks.
Thank you for thinking along, have not really thought of the option of installing Windows OS on the Macbook! Will definitely give that a try, any chance you know if my Office 365 family subscription will allow me to install a Windows version as well?
Also thanks for those roadmap links, as for Get & Transform (former Power Query) it does seem like there is some activity on this topic still, also seeing users regularly requesting updates on this.
Guy Hunkin, Would you be able to tell more?
UY-SCUTI I went the opposite way. A long time Mac user, realising that Excel for Mac wasn't really living up to my needs. I had an MS365 Business subscription that allowed me to install the full Office package on up to 5 PC's and/or Macs, plus a bunch of mobile devices. I bought Parallels and W10 and happily run the full Excel version on a virtual Windows machine, on one of my Macs, a rather old MacBook Pro. Works good enough for me. If you have a newer Mac, it's going to run even better, I suspect. At the same time, running Excel on two more Macs and a Huwawei laptop (all under the same subscription), though with the limited functionality (as you recently discovered) on both Macs.
