Power BI

  • Variables in DAX

    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…

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  • How to change the summarization of multiple columns in 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…

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

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

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

    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…

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  • Dynamic Date Formats in Power BI

    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,…

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  • Power BI – Enable Load

    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…

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

    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…

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  • Power BI Drill Through using Multiple Data Points

    A drill through in Power BI allows the reader to see secondary data related to the original page with the context of a specific data point applied, for example, drilling through on sales data can display the demographic information of the relevant customers for those sales. One limitation of the drill through functionality is that it only allows users to drill through on a single data point. If more than one is selected, the drill through…

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  • Tabular Cube Processing Report

    I have created a Power BI report which provides detail on the state of processing in a Tabular Cube.The report uses the cube’s dynamic management views to provide information about the cube’s partitions. To use the tabular cube processing report, you need to insert the following information: Server Database (Cube Name) Once entered and assuming the connection is fine you need to accept some native queries. These statements are select…

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  • Speaking at Data Platform Summit

    I’m delighted to have been selected to speak at the Data Platform Summit (DPS), a virtual conference from 2nd to 4th December 2020, with Data, Analytics and Machine Learning content around the clock for a global audience. I’ll be presenting a session on “Machine Learning in Power BI”, exploring various methods of accessing Machine Learning functionality within the Power BI world, including text analytics, prediction…

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