Text.PadStart to adjust string

A text function to format your strings

This post is an introduction to Text.PadStart.
With this text function, you can fill a cell so that it reaches a number of characters.

Here, we create a custom column and add “0” – our custom character – to the initial string so that is reaches a total length of 10 characters:

#"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn ( Demo_Table, "Custom", 
each Text.PadStart ( [BrandName], 10 , "0")
)

If you use Text.PadStart without custom character, the function add spaces to the initial string.
This code adds as many leading spaces as needed so the cell becomes 10 characters long:

#"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn ( Demo_Table, "Custom", 
each Text.PadStart ( [BrandName], 10 
)

You can find supplementary information in the slides below:

• “Padding” a numeric value
• Text.PadEnd
• Text.PadStart output

Let’s wrap up this super short blog with text functions official documentation and a BI2020 blog related with text functions.

Enjoy!