When working with data, you may need to add an index column (or an ID column) to your data. For example, you may have a list of products (names and descriptions) but you do not have an ID for each product, and you need to assign one to each product, perhaps for data modeling purposes.

To add an index or ID column to each row, you will do this in the Power Query Editor. With your query (table) open, go to the “Add Column” tab where you will see the “Index Column” option. 

You can click the menu item to use its default option – which will add an index column that starts at zero (0) – as shown below.

Or you may click the dropdown (to the right of the Index Column menu item) to choose from 3 available options (From 0, From 1, or Custom).

“From 0” will add an index column that starts at zero (0) as shown above (in the default example).

“From 1” will add an index column that starts at one (1), as shown below:

“Custom” will open a dialog for you to enter the “Starting index” value and the “Increment” between each value. In the example below, the starting index value is set to 1000, and the increment is set to 5.

This means that the first value in the index column will be 1000, the second value will be 1005, the third 1010, and so on. This is shown below.

Once your index column is added, you can rename it and move it as desired. For example, you may rename the column name to Product ID and move the column to the front of the table as shown below.

Thanks for reading. I hope you found this useful.