How to remove html tags from a column

Question

Hi
Problem is this: I get a column with a comma separated list of id's and I can successfully parse these id's and use them elsewhere. BUT, occasionally there are html tags within that id list like this:
1082471,1237423<br xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" />
Is there a way to just automatically remove all tags from a column? Could do this with regex, but since there is no support, I don't know what to do.

Answer 1

Hi,
If the HTML can be detected by a starting symbol like „<“, then you could use the following:
Unfortuntely the operation “ReplaceRange” is only available on a Text-level, so you have to invoke a function (at least to my knowledge). You also need an Index-column in your table, so if you don’t have it, you need to create one as well.
This is your function:
let
   fnRemoveHTML = (Value, Index) =>
let
   Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="Tabelle1"]}[Content],
   IndeNo = Index,
   Value_ = Source{IndeNo-1}[Value],
   length = Text.Length(Text.From(Value_)),
   position = Text.PositionOf(Text.From(Value_), "<"),
   range = length-position,
   new= if Value_ is number then Value_ else Text.ReplaceRange(Value_, position, range, "")
in
    new
in
  fnRemoveHTML
And this is how you invoke it:
let
    Quelle = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="Tabelle1"]}[Content],
    Last = Table.AddColumn(Quelle, "Custom", each fn_RemoveHTML([Value], [Index])),
    ChangedType = Table.TransformColumnTypes(Last,{{"Custom", type number}})
in
    ChangedType
Provided your table is called “Tabelle1” & the column with your values to be replaced “Value” & your index-col “Index”
Imke