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Change column labels/names in the visual

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Mario Nelaj on 14 Feb 2017 04:45:43

It would be great if we could change columns labels/names in the standard visuals (Table & Matrixes mainly). In our company we have a data warehouse build to support the PowerBI tabular model with the data. The field names in the data model are not the most intuitive to our PowerBI End User. It could be great if we could change the way the field labels are shown in our tables to be more intuitive and meaningful without needing to change the field names in the data model.

Administrator on 06 Jul 2017 13:05:17

With today's release, you can now rename any field within a chart or table! Learn more in our blog post: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/blog/power-bi-desktop-july-feature-summary-2/#rename

Comments (149)
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Sada Araki on 05 Jul 2020 22:47:31

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

Yes!!
This would be very useful for me to create multilingual reports.

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Steven Webster on 05 Jul 2020 22:47:03

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

You can fake it, sort of, for field or calculated columns using the Hierarchy. Create a new hierarchy and move the field or calculated columns into the hierarchy. If you rename the field in the hierarchy it wont change the original field name. It doesn't work for calculated measures. Even though you cant drag a hierarchy into a value field for a chart you can drag the renamed field from the hierarchy and the legend will read those names.

So far i haven't found a snag but i just started to do it today.

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rhouse on 05 Jul 2020 22:46:36

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

I also wish there was a way to make the field names dynamic. I have a field for a table called Sales 2 Years Ago. I would like that to change based on the year so for 2017 it would say 2015 Sales. I can change the name dynamically in the source query but once the year changes and the query refreshes, all of my visuals will break from my understanding.

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Shaun Dalgarno on 05 Jul 2020 22:46:02

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

Would be very useful and used frequently. Along with being able to left or right justify headers. Also the ability to show or hide headers.

But I'd take being able to edit text for now.

Is there a place we can see current issues being worked on & their planned release dates?

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Kevin T. on 05 Jul 2020 22:45:52

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

I agree, it is very important to have a clear information in the matrix.

Renaming columns should be possible, as well Dynamics names (with variables for example).

Example:
column 1 = total sales 01/2017
column 2 = total sales 01/2016 (vs Same period last year)

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CloudMonkey on 05 Jul 2020 22:45:51

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

This is very important, and I'm confused why this hasn't been done already. I've tried creating columns/measures that refer to the original column/measure, but you can only have one column of each name (in the whole of Power BI) so it is not practical - We need control at the visual level. I am currently having to overlay non-transparent text boxes over my column headings to solve this bug.

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Harry Leboeuf on 05 Jul 2020 22:45:40

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

Joined the club of interested users.
But again the same remark, the Team takes the idea "under review" but no further comments.
Even if the final verdict is negative, would be usefull to know at least something !

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Jan Meijering on 05 Jul 2020 22:45:04

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

Really??? are we already waiting for 2 years now for this very valuable feature......

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Laura on 05 Jul 2020 22:43:44

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

Yeah... it doesn't make sense to change the data field name every time we want the display name to appear a certain way... Definitely a necessary feature improvement!

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Kristers on 05 Jul 2020 22:43:27

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

This is especially painful when you use quick calc and PowerBI assigns a complete nonsense name