38 + Advanced Editor Keyboard Shortcuts in Power Query

In this article, you will learn the Advanced Editor keyboard shortcuts in Power Query that will help you improve your productivity. You’ll learn shortcuts to navigate through your data, move and select text, duplicate rows, and perform other editing tasks efficiently. These shortcuts will save you time and make you more efficient when working with Power Query.

Table of contents

• General Keyboard Shortcuts
  • General
  • Navigation
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Quick Editing
  • Commenting
  • Moving
  • Selecting
  • Duplicate or Delete
  • Efficient Editing
• Summary

General Keyboard Shortcuts

General

The first section focuses on general shortcuts to improve your workflow. To make reading your code easier, you can change the font size. Or, in other cases, you may want to toggle off the indenting behaviour of the TAB key. It can all be done.

And when you’re done editing, you can close the advanced editor with your keyboard. You can do all that with the below keystrokes.

Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Ctrl + Shift + +	Increase font size.
Ctrl + Shift + –	Decrease font size.
Ctrl + 0	Restore original font size.
Ctrl + M	Toggles tab behavior ON or OFF.
Ctrl + Tab, Enter	Save and close Advanced Editor.
Alt + F4	Close Advanced Editor (without saving).

Navigation

Moving around your code quickly can add up in time savings.

The first 4 keyboard shortcuts below move your screen up or down, whereas the last three let you jump to a previous line or a next or previous highlighted word.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Quick Editing

Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Ctrl + ↑	Scroll up a code line.
Ctrl + ↓	Scroll down a code line.
Alt + Page Up	Shift selection up one page.
Alt + Page Down	Shift selection down one page.
Ctrl + U	Return to previously selected line.
F7	Navigate to next highlighted word.
Shift + F7	Navigate to previous highlighted word.

We move on to keyboard shortcuts that focus more on editing code.

Commenting

It’s good practice to document your code. Others may take over your model, or perhaps you want to comment out certain logic temporarily. Either way, you can use the below shortcuts to address this quickly.

The shortcuts add a single-line comment by prefixing lines with //. The multi-line commenting works by prefixing the first line with /* and the last line with */.

Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Ctrl + /	(Un)comment single line comments, uses //.
Alt + Shift + A	(Un)comment multi line comments, uses /* …. */.

Moving

While writing in the advanced editor, you sometimes need to move around the code. This purpose can be aesthetic (indentation, line breaks, etc.), or perhaps you require some steps to perform earlier or later in your logic. Below shortcuts are there to help:

Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Tab	Indent / Add 3 spaces after cursor position.
Ctrl + [	Indent / Add 3 spaces at the start of the current line.
Shift + Tab	Outdent / Remove 3 spaces at start of the current line.
Ctrl + ]	Outdent / Remove 3 spaces at start of the current line.
Alt + ↑	Move current line of code up one line.
Alt + ↓	Move current line of code down one line.

Selecting

When you need to remove or replace code, the shortcuts below help you highlight all code up till the beginning or end of the current line or the query itself.

Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Shift + Home	Highlight to start of current line.
Shift + End	Highlight to end of current line.
Shift + Page Up	Highlight up to the start of the query.
Shift + Page Down	Highlight up to the end of the query.

Duplicate or Delete

There are three shortcuts that help in duplicating existing lines of code or deleting lines:

Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Ctrl + Shift + K	Delete selected line(s) of code.
Shift + Alt + ↑	Duplicate current line(s) of code.
Shift + Alt + ↓	Duplicate current line(s) of code.

Efficient Editing

To get efficient in your editing, you can use some tricks. Instead of writing out all parentheses, Curly Brackets or Double Quote, you can select characters and use a shortcut.

At other times, you can use a shortcut to edit multiple lines of code at the same time. Incorporate both in your workflow, and you can see the difference.

And when you make a mistake, you can always undo or redo changes.

Keyboard Shortcut	Action
Shift + “, Space	Enclose selection in Double Quotes.
Shift + (	Enclose selection in Parenthesis.
Shift + {	Enclose selection in Curly Brackets.
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + ↑	Copy cursor to line above for multi-line editing.
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + ↓	Copy cursor to line below for multi-line editing.
Alt + Click	Manually choose multiple cursors or highlight multiple words for simultaneous editing.
Ctrl + Z	Undo change.
Ctrl + Y	Redo change.

Summary

In conclusion, using keyboard shortcuts in Power Query advanced editor can be a game changer for your productivity. If you can’t get enough of them, this article delves into the best keyboard shortcuts for Power Query.

The shortcuts that we covered in this article are designed to help you navigate through your data, move and select text, duplicate rows, and perform other editing tasks efficiently.

By using these shortcuts, you can save time, work more efficiently and perform tasks more accurately. It’s a great way to become more proficient with the Advanced Editor.

I hope you found this article helpful and that you are now ready to use the keyboard shortcuts in your work with Power Query Advanced Editor.

Enjoy Power Query!