What's your go-to method for cleaning inconsistent CSV files from different clients?

Our take

Cleaning inconsistent CSV files can be a daunting task, especially when dealing with varying formats from multiple clients. If you find yourself spending hours manually reformatting data, it's time to explore more efficient solutions. Power Query is a powerful tool within Excel that can streamline this process, allowing you to automate data cleaning and transformation. Additionally, consider strategies for handling changing column names, as developing a flexible system can save you significant time in the long run.

Every week I get CSV exports from about a dozen different clients. Same data categories but formatted completely differently. Date formats vary, some use comma delimiters while others use semicolons, and the column order is never the same twice. Right now I'm manually reformatting everything before it hits my main excel file and it's eating hours.

I know power query exists but I haven't dug into it yet. Is that the standard solution here or do people use other approaches? Also curious how you handle files where the column names change slightly month to month. Do you just manually adjust your cleaning steps each time or is there a way to build something more flexible?

submitted by /u/goxper
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