Find the Most Repeated Words Using Power Query

To find which words appear most often in a list of sentences, such as survey comments or product reviews, Power Query can split the text into words, count each one and sort the list, all refreshable with one click.

StepsSplit → Unpivot → Group By → Sort
Works inExcel 2016 and later
Example100 English proverbs

The data

List of 100 English proverbs in Excel

Step 1: Load the data

Click in the list and go to Data → From Table/Range.

Proverbs loaded into the Power Query Editor

Step 2: Make the words comparable

Select the text column and apply Transform → Format → lowercase, so The and the count as one word. If the text has commas or full stops, replace them with nothing using Transform → Replace Values.

Step 3: Split into words

Home → Split Column → By Delimiter, choose Space and click OK. Each word goes into its own column.

Split Column by Delimiter
Each word in a separate column

Tip: under Advanced options, choose Split into Rows to skip Step 4.

Step 4: Unpivot into one column

Right-click the first column header and choose Unpivot Other Columns, then remove the ID and Attribute columns. All 659 words are now in one column.

Unpivot Other Columns
Words stacked into one column

Step 5: Count each word

Right-click the word column → Group By, choose Count Rows and name the new column Count.

Group By dialog with Count Rows
Count of each word

Step 6: Sort and keep the top 10

Sort Count descending, then Home → Keep Rows → Keep Top Rows → 10. Rename the column Words and Close & Load To a cell on your sheet.

Words sorted by count
Top 10 most repeated words loaded into Excel

Add more sentences to the source and click Refresh: the counts update.

Refreshing the word count after adding data

Remove common words

Little words like the, is and to usually top the list. Keep a one-column table of words to ignore, load it as a connection, and use Merge Queries with a Left Anti join to remove them. See Joins in Power Query.

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