Ok so sorry this is going to be long...
I have spent 2 hours with tech support.
basically I bought ms office pro plus. hooray! specifically because I needed power query
however the download page for microsoft says that if I have office 365 I should uninstall it before putting pro plus on. I didn't think I had 365 so I download and everything downloads / installs just fine.
I go into Excel options menu (where you go for add ins) to activate the power query add-in Nothing! power pivot is there but nothing else even close. so I activate what is there and file with tech support.
so I reach out to microsoft tech support
we look for a download of PowerQuery. we find one I dowload it.
I try to install it and it says that it only works with excell 2010 and 2013 and that 2016 already has
PowerQuery natively and it will not install it on my machine.
turns out I have a bunch of previous installs, office home and student 2016 and An old trial of 365 (which I didn't even know was there) , as well as the new install.
the tech support guy and I uninstall all the other old installations.
we re- download and install office 2019 pro plus
so I check excel : Still no powerQuery!
Is there some way I can get powerQuery for office pro plus 2019?
Microsoft needs to offer
A free download / installer for power query in ecxel 2016 and 2019 because many of the official downloads do not have it! I downloaded direct from Microsoft and activated and everything.
2 hours of work plus and still no Power Query
I am still trying to fix this issue but i don't know if I can do that.
