Is it possible to keep cell formatting (bold/italic/etc) from a regular table to a power query table?

[researcherjake]

Basically the title.
I'm trying to preserve the cell formatting from a regular Excel table into a Power Query table.
For example, cell A1 has the words "The Quick Brown Fox" and the only word "Brown" has been bolded. I would like to have that same word bolded in the Power Query table.

I know about "Change Type" and "Transform" in Power Query, but I don't see any other formatting options outside some Advanced Editor shenanigans'.
My m-code isn't the strongest, and my VBA skills are shaky at best, so there's a good chance I'm just missing something.

Are there any options?

See image for more examples

 

[severynm]

Hi! Kinda, but mostly no. Power Query is all about getting and transforming data, and other than data type formatting (decimal vs int vs date vs text - very important things to sort out) does not deal at all with individual formatting. You use PQ to do all of the data crunching, and then the end program (Power BI / Excel) to control the actual table formatting.

I'm trying to preserve the cell formatting from a regular Excel table into a Power Query table.

Is the formatting able to be expressed as a set of rules in Conditional Formatting? If not, you're SOL; you can always manually format text within a cell but as soon as the table is refreshed, those changes are gone.

If you can use conditional formatting rules, you can apply them to the resulting PQ table in the worksheet. Click on the table and go to Table Design → Properties → ensure Preserve cell formatting is on (you can turn off Adjust column width if you want - I usually find it annoying). Your conditional formatting rules will persist and will update when the data is refreshed.

 

[researcherjake]

Hi! Kinda, but mostly no. Power Query is all about getting and transforming data, and other than data type formatting (decimal vs int vs date vs text - very important things to sort out) does not deal at all with individual formatting. You use PQ to do all of the data crunching, and then the end program (Power BI / Excel) to control the actual table formatting.

Is the formatting able to be expressed as a set of rules in Conditional Formatting? If not, you're SOL; you can always manually format text within a cell but as soon as the table is refreshed, those changes are gone.

If you can use conditional formatting rules, you can apply them to the resulting PQ table in the worksheet. Click on the table and go to Table Design → Properties → ensure Preserve cell formatting is on (you can turn off Adjust column width if you want - I usually find it annoying). Your conditional formatting rules will persist and will update when the data is refreshed.

That's a bummer, but I appreciate the confirmation!