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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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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 22:33:59

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

it would be great to indicate a caption for the measure in every display, very interesting in complex powerbi files

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Franky Leeuwerck on 05 Jul 2020 22:33:50

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

It should be possible to alter the field display names in the visualization (e.g. table). Often the context of the report allows to shorten the label. Shorter names allows more columns.

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Kai van den Berg on 05 Jul 2020 22:33:41

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

This is especially usefull for connections live connections (through the data gateway) to tabular models. just like in Excel

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Rob Duke on 05 Jul 2020 22:33:30

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

The work around I'm using is to create a measure in Power BI Desktop. I can then call it something more meaningful.

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Luis Simoes on 05 Jul 2020 22:31:58

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

This is such a basic functionality in every reporting tool that I don't even understand how this is not implemented or requested more intensively.

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Daryn Varney on 05 Jul 2020 22:29:55

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

Would be extremely useful, when doing month on month, count of x and count of x don't really allow you to create a distinction between which is current and which is last month

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Daryn Varney on 05 Jul 2020 22:29:27

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

Totally agree with this, particularly when doing a month on month comparison, there is no way to name a field to the current month and previous for example, instead both columns have the same name and this creates confusion.

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Garrek on 05 Jul 2020 22:29:18

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

This would be super useful.

In many cases similar reports are consumed by different execs who want to see different aliases for the same column.

Adding support for column alias would help a lot.
This info could be stored at the visual element level under the little triangle that currently has things like "Conditional Formatting" and such.

Please consider adding feature.

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David Baldauff on 05 Jul 2020 22:28:54

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

We are able to dynamically change a column name, however, if that column is configured on a report, it causes a problem. So, this only helps for ad hoc querying, not a productionalized report. We can change the column/field name via M/Power Query, but then we need Power BI to recognize that column/field as the same column. Also, when we do this dynamically columns which are renamed will drop out of a hierarchy. This prevents us from building dynamic hierarchies.

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ryan on 05 Jul 2020 22:28:54

RE: Change column labels/names in the visual

Please dear god make this happen.
My very important table headers are reading..
'Sales' | Received' | 'Average of Occupancy' | Average of Discount | 'Count of Departure
Very ugly