Hi,

I have two recurring issues , very similar and I still can't figured out how to get around it in a more efficient way. 

1.Get Data from Access Database -  I have access files(tables)  provided to me weekly and until a year ago the tables were consistent but  lately,  people managing the data are making changes in columns, adding  or deleting it.

After I had set up my query and having no issues linking it to those access tables, very often now I get an error saying [Expression.Error] The column 'xyzxyzxyz ' of the table wasn't found.  My workaround now is to keep adding  "dummy" columns to replace the ones taken out or my query won't refresh.  

Is there a way to have power query get data from access tables and ignore columns that now no longer exist and prevent the error from happening when refreshing the data ? 

2.Get Data from Workbook - I'm also given an excel with technicality the same columns every month. I say technically because the columns headers will have a date of the month added to it.  It's a monthly update and each header will display the date of the month. So, I get the same error above, because month is not the same and column displays headers with a different text . Such as: "Customer info for 01/01/2020" and other columns also have 01/01/2020 in it but not all. columns.  Now in February , columns will have date of 02/01/2020 instead of January date and so on. 

In this case, is there any workaround in power query besides cleaning the data prior to importing ?  

If anyone has any insight I would appreciate it . Either way it has become a time consuming process and I  have to start over every time  there's a change in those access tables or as said, insert dummy columns.  The excel files I'm trying to have the people providing the data to remove date from the header, but I haven't been lucky yet. 

Thank you so much

Sonia