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Category: Power BI

Downloading Power BI Reports from the Power BI Service

Published 2025-08-14 by Kevin Feasel

Gilbert Quevauvilliers wants to download a report:

I am sure we have all had it where there is Power BI report in the service which has been working for a long time. Then there is a requirement to make a change, and NO ONE can find the original PBIX.

There now is an easy way to download the Power BI Report or the Power BI Semantic model from the Power BI Service, and I will show you how to do this!

Click through to see how. No Power BI Report Server jokes this time around, however, because that functionality has been around for a while as long as you have appropriate permissions on the reports themselves.

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Custom Fonts in Power BI

Published 2025-08-13 by Kevin Feasel

Ben Richardson looks at fonts:

Want your Power BI reports to look more polished and on-brand?

Fonts play a big role in how your reports are perceived – impacting clarity, trust, and style.

But Power BI doesn’t let you upload custom fonts directly. So, what can you do?

Click through for several options.

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Recommendations around SUMMARIZECOLUMNS

Published 2025-08-13 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari share some thoughts:

SUMMARIZECOLUMNS is the most widely-used function in Power BI queries. An important and unique feature of SUMMARIZECOLUMNS is that it determines automatically how to scan the model to produce its result. Indeed, when using SUMMARIZE, GROUPBY, ADDCOLUMNS, or any of the more basic querying functions, developers must declare the source table to perform the grouping, as well as the group-by columns and the measures to add to the result. On the other hand, SUMMARIZECOLUMNS requires only the group-by columns; there is no need to provide the source table, which is the primary ingredient of any query. SUMMARIZECOLUMNS figures out the structure of the result by itself, using a sophisticated algorithm that requires some understanding.

The pair do have a whitepaper available on their premium (paid) service but even the free post contains a lot of detail you’ll want to check out if you use DAX.

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A Primer on TMDL Security Risks in Power BI

Published 2025-08-12 by Kevin Feasel

John Kerski gives us the low-down:

The Tabular Model Definition Language (TMDL) provides a simpler way of defining Power BI Semantic Models. Unlike the JSON-based Tabular Model Scripting Language (TMSL), TMDL uses a more accessible tab-based format for specifying DAX measures, relationships, and Power Query code.

Click through for the various ways things could go wrong, as well as how to mitigate those risks.

Mind you, “security risks” is a very broad concept and is not an indictment of the product, but rather something to keep in mind as you attempt to write secure code. For example, did you know that bad guys could potentially access all of your data in your database by using a series of SELECT statements?

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Creating a Day-Level Slicer in Power BI

Published 2025-08-12 by Kevin Feasel

Ben Richardson knows what day it is:

Whether you’re tracking daily sales, monitoring customer behaviour, or managing service operations:

Day-level slicers in Power BI give you the precision your reports need.

Power BI offers great flexibility for filtering by year, quarter, or month.

But when daily trends drive your decisions, default settings just aren’t enough.

Read on to see how you can take the normal slicer and make it a bit better for working with dates. And, of course, it also makes sense to have a date dimension to help out with these sorts of things.

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Moving Items around in Power BI

Published 2025-08-08 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad sends this item to the back of the line:

When you have multiple items overlapping, you often need the feature to bring one forward or move it backward. In Power BI, this feature isn’t available by right-click. Instead, there is a Selection pane where you can easily set the order of elements. The selection pane also has other benefits. In this article and video, you will learn how to use the Selection pane to build the right order for your visuals.

Read on to see how it works.

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Grouping and Binning in Power BI

Published 2025-08-07 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad pulls an older post out of the archives:

The latest update of Power BI Desktop (October 2016) has many features. Two of these features are grouping and binning. These features used to create groups of items and visualize them better in the report. Previously you could do that by Power Query or DAX calculated columns, now it is all possible simply through the graphical user interface of report editor. In this post I’ll show you how to create banding (binning) and grouping simply with these features. If you like to learn more about Power BI; read the Power BI online book from Rookie to Rock Star.

How long has Curated SQL been around? Long enough that I covered this the first time. But hey, it’s still valid information.

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Data Dictionaries in Power BI

Published 2025-08-06 by Kevin Feasel

Ben Richardson builds a dictionary:

Have you ever opened a Power BI report and felt overwhelmed by all the columns, measures, and tables?

It can feel like a guessing game trying to figure out what each field represents.

A well-built data dictionary eliminates that confusion, giving you clarity and confidence when exploring reports.

This is one of those bits of documentation that can be incredibly useful but people rarely keep it up to date.

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What-If Analysis in Power BI

Published 2025-08-04 by Kevin Feasel

Ben Richardson takes us through a what-if analysis:

What If Analysis is a modelling technique used to evaluate different outcomes by changing key input variables.

In Power BI, it uses What If parameters and dynamic DAX measures that recalculate outputs based on user input. Users can ask questions like:

  • “What if sales increase by 10%?”
  • “What if production costs drop by 5%?”

The parameters are created in the Modelling tab, where you define value ranges. Power BI automatically generates a slicer and a measure, which can then be used in DAX calculations to dynamically adjust metrics like revenue, cost, or profit.

Read on to see how it works, understanding that you have to provide the formulas for behavior. In other words, if your what-if parameter is around the unit price of some product, there is no built-in concept of price elasticity for the product. That’s something you’d have to implement yourself.

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Storytelling with Time Series Scatter Charts in Power BI

Published 2025-08-04 by Kevin Feasel

Reza Rad takes us through data changes:

Column or Bar chart can be easily used for showing a single measure’s insight across a category. Mixed charts such as Line and Column chart can be used for showing two measure and comparing their values across a set of categories. However there are some charts that can be used to show values of three measures, such as Scatter Chart. Scatter chart not only shows values of three measure across different categories, it also has a special Play axis that helps you to tell the story behind the data. In this post you’ll learn how easy is to visualize something with Scatter chart and tell a story with that. If you like to learn more about Power BI, read Power BI online book; from Rookie to Rock Star.

Read on for the blog post as well as a video version.

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