Excel Power Query: transform two cells into two duplicate rows - excel

Question

I have an Excel Power Query that imports and transforms a CSV data-transfer file from what is essentially a timesheeting web application ready for importing into our payroll application, again via CSV. Certain rows have both ‘daytime’ and ‘night-time’ hours in two separate fields. I need to transform these two fields into two separate rows adding a custom ‘rate’ field for each. To illustrate:
Name day hours night hours
A.N Other 6 4
Transforms into:
Name day hours night hours hours rate
A.N Other 6 0 6 rate1
A.N Other 0 4 4 rate2
The payroll application can only process ‘hours’ and ‘rate’ on individual rows
I have gone through the full ‘M’ specification and nothing jumps out.
I have googled and there’s lots of stuff about removing duplicates, not a lot about creating them!
To be honest, I don’t really know where to start. Any help would be warmly received.

Answer 1

The key step here is to select the day hours and night hours columns in your query editor and choose Unpivot Columns under the Transform tab.
This will yield:
Name Attribute Value
A.N Other day hours 6
A.N Other night hours 4
Once you do that you can create custom columns using the following rules:
if [Attribute] = "day hours" then [Value] else 0
and analogously for the night hours column:
if [Attribute] = "night hours" then [Value] else 0
From there you can rearrange, rename, and delete columns as desired.
You can also create a custom rate column with similar logic using the Attribute column or one of the hours columns.