Connecting two tables that have a many-to-many relationship in powerpivot

Question

I have a question for you guys on how to connect two tables that have a "many-to-many" relationship. Please see the two tables below:

SKU_NO   CATEGORY
sku_1      hair 
sku_2      skin 
sku_3      hair 

CATEGORY   CATEGORY_TYPE
hair         type_a 
hair         type_b 
hair         type_c  
skin         type_a 
skin         type_d  

The outpout I would like to have is a table that gives me for each SKU the full list of category types. So for the above two tables the output would be:

SKU_NO    CATEGORY_TYPE
sku_1         type_a 
sku_1         type_b 
sku_1         type_c  
sku_2         type_a 
sku_2         type_d 
sku_3         type_a 
sku_3         type_b 
sku_3         type_c  

I have been currently trying to do the above by inserting the two tables in powerpivot and adding a dummy table (see below) between them, but with no success. I am open to suggestions - does not have to be in powerpivot but it would be my preferred tool.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

This can't be done in Power Pivot, as you have multiple keys id's in both tables. However this can be done in Power Query, then analyzed in a pivot table.

As your referencing Power Pivot, I'll assume you use Excel 2016.

1. One at a time, open each of the tables, as PQ data tables -- essentially, open then close them immediately -- you're only trying to get each of them loaded into the Data Model. Ideally (less duplication) you'll want to "load only" not "load and save".

2. Couple of options here depending on your exact requirements: you can either open, one of the PQ tables, you can select the table by reference (again, less duplication), or just merge the two tables. in PQ "Merge" then select the common (link) data fields

I included all of the table used here (hopefully) for clarity:

Hope this works for you.