Have you ever come across an issue where your Power BI matrix column widths just aren’t the same width and visually just don’t look right?

• 

Unfortunately (as of April 21’) there is no easy way to make all column widths equal in the format pane of a matrix visual.

However there is a hack to set the width of your all columns in a matrix so that they are all equal and pixel perfect with DAX!

How do you do this I hear you ask?

Firstly create a new measure called ‘Set Column Width’ and enter a string value equal to the length of your longest column title. In my case my longest title is “Front Derailleur Cage” and this has a length of 21 characters including spaces. Therefore I need to set my DAX expression to be a string which is 21 characters long. In my example I’ve just created a string of 21 asterixis wrapped in speech marks – but this can be any combinations of characters you like!

• 

The next job is to go to the format pane of your matrix and set the “Show on rows” toggle equal to ‘On’.

• 

Next make sure the ‘Auto-size column width’ is set equal to ‘On’.

• 

Now drag your newly created DAX expression (in my case ‘Set Column Width’) on to the values field of your matrix.

• 

You’ll then notice that your matrix will look similar to the snip below – a little bit of a mess! But not to worry this all part of the plan!

• 

Next go back the format pane of your matrix and set ‘Auto-size column width’ to ‘Off’.

• 

Now remove your ‘Set Column Width’ measure from the visual by clicking the ‘X’ symbol on the field pane.

• 

Finally increase the width and height of your matrix visual to accommodate the increased column widths.

• 

You now have pixel perfect column widths which are all equal to each other!

A huge thanks to the brilliant MVP Ruth Pozuelo Martinez (@ruthpozuelo) from curbal.com for this hack! It’s a been a massive help for my Power BI reports here at Purple Frog! Hopefully the Power BI team will release a proper solution in the matrix format pane soon!