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How do I clean messy Excel data without doing it manually every month?
Use Power Query in Excel or a script or SQL transformation to record your cleaning steps once and reapply them to each new file. Steps such as trimming, splitting columns, fixing types and removing duplicates then run automatically, rather than being repeated by hand.
Power Query records each transformation and replays it on refresh. For larger or shared workflows, load files into a database and clean them with SQL or Python.
Best practices:
- Keep the raw file untouched and clean a copy.
- Name each step so others can follow it.
- Add checks, such as row counts and totals, before and after cleaning.
- Make the process fail loudly if a column name changes.
This turns a fragile monthly chore into a repeatable, documented process.
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