Call today 0845 643 6463

Power BI

  • Combining Queries from Multiple Sources in Power BI using Merge and Append

    March 1st, 2022 in Azure, Blog, Business Intelligence, Power BI, Power Query, SQL Server, Uncategorized

    It is always good practice to do as much data preparation as close to the sources as you can before importing or connecting them to your Power BI reports, but what if there are circumstances where this isn’t possible? I had an issue recently where a third-party application had been updated and both the new and legacy versions were being used side-by-side. Logging data from both versions was being written to two separate Azure SQL databases.…

    » Read more

  • Making the DAX Engine Work for You

    December 3rd, 2021 in Blog, DAX, Power BI, Uncategorized

    In my last blog post which can be found here, I demonstrated that it’s important to limit your DAX filters to specific columns rather than entire tables, now we know that we can and should do it, let’s explore why and how it works. There are numerous ways to write an expression that will give the same result set, but why are some ways more efficient than others? To answer that we need to know a little about what happens under the hood,…

    » Read more

  • Replicating SQL windowing functions in Power Query.

    October 1st, 2021 in Blog, Power BI, Power Query

    I’m sure you’ve all heard of windowing functions in SQL Server? But what if you need to replicate these windowing functions in Power Query? Here I have a sample CarSales.csv dataset of car sales per brand, per year, per month and the number of units sold. I will use this dataset to demonstrate how we can replicate the windowing LAG function in Power Query. In my example I’d like to calculate the month on month sales growth per car…

    » Read more

  • Variables in DAX

    September 10th, 2021 in Analysis Services, Blog, DAX, Power BI

    Variables can simplify your DAX code, help with debugging and help improve performance. To use variables in your DAX measure you need to declare a variable using the VAR keyword, give the variable a name, and then assign an expression to the variable. You can use multiple variables in a measure but when using variables you must use a RETURN statement to specify the final output to be returned. To show how to make use of variables I’ll go…

    » Read more

  • How to change the summarization of multiple columns in Power BI.

    August 17th, 2021 in Blog, Power BI

    Have you ever been faced with the issue where Power BI automatically adds a sigma symbol to the front of your column if it detects it’s a data type of integer or decimal? Now this isn’t too much of an issue if you’ve imported only a few columns but what if you’ve imported lots? Going through this column by column can become tiresome! Luckily there is a hack, not only to turn summarization to “None” on multiple columns at once, but…

    » Read more

  • How the UNICHAR() DAX Function Enhances Power BI Reports

    July 2nd, 2021 in Blog, DAX, Power BI, Uncategorized

    Enhance your Power BI reports and heighten your user's experience with icons and emojis

    » Read more

  • How to export more than 30,000 rows of data from Power BI Desktop.

    June 21st, 2021 in Blog, DAX, Power BI

    Have you ever wanted to export a table from Power BI Desktop into Excel just to make sure the DAX you’ve written is performing as expected but ran into this error message: “Data exceeds the limit – Your data is too large. Some data sampling may occur”? Most probably this has occurred because you’ve got more than 30,000 rows of data in your table that you’re trying to export. In the example shown below I’ve actually got 30,001 rows…

    » Read more

  • Dynamic Date Formats in Power BI

    May 7th, 2021 in Blog, Power BI, Uncategorized

    Which date format styles should we use if we are building a report that is being consumed internationally? Remember, 01/12/2021 is December 1st or January 12th depending in which part of the world it is being read. The decision may be taken from our hands if there is a company policy in place. If the company is based in the USA, for example, they may choose to use US formatted date fields as a standard for reporting across the entire business,…

    » Read more

  • Power BI – Enable Load

    April 16th, 2021 in Blog, Business Intelligence, Power BI, Uncategorized

    In Power BI Power Query there is an option to enable or disable whether a table is loaded into the report. The option ‘Enable load’ can be found by right clicking on the table. Typically, by default, the load is already enabled. There is also an option ‘Include in report refresh’ which lets a user stop a table from refreshing when they refresh the entire report. This maybe useful for static tables or tables that are large which take a…

    » Read more

  • How to make your matrix column widths all equal to each other in Power BI using DAX.

    April 9th, 2021 in Blog, Power BI, Uncategorized

    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…

    » Read more