Joe Travers

How to use DAX to count up something (and ignore duplicate values.) Hey hey Reader, A few months ago I posted about the DAX COUNT function (which counts things, because #obvi) ... but it counts EVERYTHING, including duplicate values. So, thankfully there's the DISTINCTCOUNT function, so you can count something up and ignore all those duplicates. VERY handy if you have a large dataset and need to use an accurate count of something (ID #s, departments, clients, etc etc etc) in some DAX. DAX:...

How to safely publish a Power BI report publicly. Hey there Reader, Today's How To Use Power BI post is something that can potentially keep you from losing your job. Or paying many thousands of dollars. Or divulging personal, health or corporate information.It's how to SAFELY publish a Power BI report publicly. It's something that a lot of people unfortunately overlook, despite the hints and warnings Power BI has about it. How to safely publish Power BI to the web Not loving How To Use Power...

How to merge columns in Power BI Let's get it together Reader,Specifically, let's learn how to MERGE columns in Power BI. Sometimes, our data is spread across multiple columns and we may need to bring it together. Maybe you have address data but the street number and the street name are in their own columns... maybe you have first and last names of customers/clients/staff/whoever and need those names to come together.Power Query Editor: Merging Columns Not loving How To Use Power BI in your...

How to build a Ring Donut chart in Power BI! Hey there Reader, Last week, our post was about the new border and transparency options in Pie and Donut charts and specifically why they are NOT good features for Microsoft to add if we care about accessibility and usefulness...This week however, I'm showing you ONE way borders can be kinda useful in a Donut Chart... to make a kind of Donut chart I'm calling a Ring Donut chart. You can see it to the right of this paragraph. Just this one way for...

How to NOT use new transparency and border options in Pie & Donut Charts Don't do this Reader, This week's post on How To Use Power BI is a bit different than usual. A couple weeks ago I recorded a video that talked about the new Transparency and Border options that have been added to Pie & Donut Chart formatting, and why, most of the time, you should NOT be using them.Microsoft sometimes adds things to Power BI (and a lot of Power BI people get way too excited about them) that don't actually...

How to search (and find) formatting options in Power BI I found you Reader! This week we're talking about a feature on the Power BI formatting pane that lets us search (yay!) for formatting options. We'll explore how it works most of the time, but also when it doesn't work at all. *cue the womp womp sad trombone* How to search formatting options in Power BI Not loving How To Use Power BI in your inbox anymore? Unsubscribe here. (because you should only get these emails if you love them and...

How to ... Hi Reader,This week's post is all about splitting data columns using Power Query Editor. Sometimes your data source has information that would be more useful in 2 (or more) columns all smushed together into 1 column...While it's best to fix this in your actual data source, sometimes you don't have direct access to it, so you need to do it in Power BI itself, using Power Query Editor.It's nice and easy to do, if you need to!How to split data columns in Power BI using Power Query...