There are a lot of really smart people that work with Power BI, Power Pivot and Power Query and share their ideas on how to solve particular problems. This is a page of links that I have found that solve particular problems. I am sharing them here so others can use them, but also so I can find them again next time I need them.
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| What’s New in Power BI? | community.powerbi.com/t5/Data-Stories-Gallery/What-s-New-in-Power-BI/ |
| Theme templates for Power BI visuals | dataveld.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/template-theme-files-for-power-bi-visuals/ |
| Bug Reporting | community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/idb-p/Issues |
| The official Microsoft Power BI Blog; with regular updates about everything that is new. | blogs.msdn.com/b/powerbi/ |
| Power BI Helper | radacad.com/power-bi-helper |
| Power BI Desktop – Terms and Definitions | blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/samlester/2017/04/12/power-bi-desktop-terms-and-definitions/ |
| DAX Formatter. This is a great tool to format your DAX code using spacing and new lines to make it easier to read | www.daxformatter.com/ |
| DAX Patterns. This is an interesting website that explains different DAX concepts and ‘how’ they can be reused to get particular outcomes | www.daxpatterns.com/ |
| DAX As a Query Language This is a good blog post I found that covers the basics of DAX as a query language | www.simple-talk.com/sql/reporting-services/using-dax-to-retrieve-tabular-data/ |
| DAX Black Magic This is a good blog post I found that explains how “black magic” works where the data table filters the lookup table. Warning; you really need to have some understanding of SQL and DB design to understand this. | mdxdax.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/logic-behind-magic-of-dax-cross-table.html |
| How to create a local Power BI desktop file and have it sync automatically to the Power BI service with OneDrive. | powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-refresh-desktop-file-onedrive/ or community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Using-BI-Desktop-with-Excel-File-in-OneDrive-for-Business/m-p/18566#M5511 |
| Power BI Support; Ideas and Self Help | powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/support/ |
| An excellent article and video from “Guy in a Cube” Adam Saxon about the various options to share your Power BI reports in the Power BI Service. Excellent Infographic of Free vs Pro features from Gilbert | powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/tech-tip-thursday-sharing-your-data/ |
| Power BI 12 month free trial | https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Changes-to-the-free-Power-BI/May-3-announcement-FAQ/td-p/167399 |
| Power BI White Papers Calculate distance between 2 points in Power BI | https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-whitepapers/ |
| Nested Filters in Measures I was doing some work for a client and need to work out how to refer to an Earlier row context in a Measure. Quick search found this | javierguillen.wordpress.com/2012/02/06/can-earlier-be-used-in-dax-measures/ |
| Grid Generator | www.fredrikhedenstrom.com/gridgen |
| Book list from Power BI Central | https://powerbicentral.net/books-about-power-bi/ |
| Power BI Features List | http://aka.ms/pbifeatures |
| Theme File Generator | https://powerbi.tips/tools/report-theme-generator-v3/ |
| Best design practices for reports and visuals | https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/power-bi-visualization-best-practices |
| Grid Generator | www.fredrikhedenstrom.com/gridgen |
| Book list from Power BI Central | https://powerbicentral.net/books-about-power-bi/ |
| Power BI Features List | http://aka.ms/pbifeatures |
| Power BI Weekly A free weekly newsletter which collates articles from the whole of the Power BI ecosystem | https://powerbiweekly.info/ |
| Power BI Blogmap – The blogmap curates a list of Power BI-related blogs. | https://powerbi.world/ |
| Power BI Blogs interactive report | https://powerbicentral.net/blogs-about-power-bi/?utm_source=powerbi&utm_medium=social&utm_content=power-bi-blog&utm_campaign=Blog+Posts |
| Power BI Cleaner tool to remove unused columns and/or measures from the data model. | https://www.thebiccountant.com/2020/01/01/tidy-up-power-bi-models-with-the-power-bi-cleaner-tool/ |
| Tool to compare 2 versions of Power BI files | https://www.thebiccountant.com/2019/09/14/compare-power-bi-files-with-power-bi-comparer-tool/ |
| DAX.do – Code, run, and share DAX | https://dax.do/ |
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| Which versions of Office have Power Pivot? | https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Where-is-Power-Pivot-aa64e217-4b6e-410b-8337-20b87e1c2a4b?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&fromAR=1 |
| Combine more than one file of identical structure into a single table in PowerPivot by editing the Data Source | www.contextures.com/PowerPivot-Identical-Excel-Files.html |
| Power Pivot Reference Card | powerpivotpro.com/2015/10/giving-back-steal-this-reference-card/ |
| What is eating up my memory the PowerPivot / Excel edition | www.powerpivotblog.nl/what-is-eating-up-my-memory-powerpivot-excel-edition/ |
| PowerPivot and SharePoint This is a very good article that talks about the limitations of hosting PowerPivot Workbooks on SharePoint. | whitepages.unlimitedviz.com/2013/08/power-bi-office-365-and-file-size-limits-be-careful/ |
| Power Pivot Broken? Recently I had an issue where PowerPivot for Excel 2013 just stopped working. I tried all the normal tricks of disabling the addin and re-enabling it. This time it was really broken. I found this link; ran the automatic repair tool for PowerPivot (there is one for Power View too) and all fixed. Another option to try is first to run Excel in Safe mode (goto run and type “Excel.exe /safe” without the quotes); then turn off all Com Addins; then shut down Excel; restart in normal mode and turn them back on. | blogs.technet.com/ |
| Memory Consumption. A colleague of mine Scott Senkeresty at Tiny Lizard recently did some investigation into Kasper de Jong’s PowerPivot Workbook Memory VBA code. He has enhanced that code and made a new more complete version available. You can find it at the provided link. | tinylizard.com/2014/09/26/script-update-what-is-eating-up-my-memory-in-power-pivot/ |
| VBA Data Model for PowerPivot There was a very good blog post by Dany Hoter on Rob’s blog that explains how to use the VBA data model for PowerPivot v 2013. Here is the link | www.powerpivotpro.com/2014/07/adding-tables-to-a-model-from-vba-in-excel-2013/ |
| Unnofficial Memory Patch for 32 bit Excel | ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php/ |
| Official Microsoft Memory Patch for 32 bit Excel | support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3160741/ |
| Excel 2016 losing data model on save? There’s a fix for that. | support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3114297/ |
| OLAP Pivot Table Extensions for Excel 2016. | olappivottableextend.codeplex.com/ |
| Chart of Accounts/Income Statement – Derek Rickard YouTube Video | www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojHZkWkEY7Q/ |
| Migrating from SSAS Tabular to Power Pivot. Nice article from Gerhard Brueckl | blog.gbrueckl.at/2014/05/restoring-a-ssas-tabular-model-to-power-pivot/ |
| DMV to extract measures from a Power Pivot Data Model | Click to download |
| Connect to the Power Pivot Data Model from an External Program (Marco Russo) | sqlblog.com/blogs/marco_russo/archive/2014/02/26/connecting-to-powerpivot-from-an-external-program-such-as-tableau.aspx |
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| An excellent learning resource for learning VBA | www.vbaexceltutorial.com |
| Count unique values in a list using the VBA Collection Object. Look for the solution referencing the Collection Object. | stackoverflow.com/questions/23035511/count-the-unique-values-in-one-column-in-excel-2010-or-r-with-1-million-rows |
| A great resource with lots of samples of how to work with Pivot Tables using VBA | www.contextures.com/xlPivot11.html |
| Ever want to give Microsoft feedback about Excel; or influence a new feature? This is the site you need. | excel.uservoice.com/ |
| Need help from Microsoft to get Power Pivot working with your version of Office? Go to this link and select “Office” | support.microsoft.com/en-us or answers.microsoft.com |
| A nice way to provide a list of values in an Excel workbook; and then apply that list as a filter in a Pivot Table. | www.thebiccountant.com/2015/08/21/want-to-filter-a-pivottable-based-on-an-external-range-or-list/ |
| Turn off time grouping in PivotTables in Excel 2016 for Windows. A word of caution: The solution describes how to make changes to the Windows Registry. Before editing the registry back up any valuable data. Use Registry Editor at your own risk. | https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turn-off-time-grouping-in-PivotTables-in-Excel-2016-for-Windows-6be5afed-348c-4db2-9f87-5ac262d67b3f?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&fromAR=1 |
| This article shows you how to use VBA to change a cell value in a closed Excel workbook. | https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27908561/use-excel-vba-to-change-the-value-of-a-cell-in-a-closed-workbook |
| Identifying PivotTable Collisions | http://dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2017/12/08/identifying-pivottable-collisions/ |
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| NSW Crime Stats | data.gov.au/dataset/nsw-crime-data |
| Various World Stats – Hans Rosling site | www.gapminder.org/ |
| Good free calendar for PowerPivot from the Azure Marketplace | datamarket.azure.com/dataset/boyanpenev/datestream |
| Description | Link |
|---|---|
| Magnify/Zoom any screen in windows – Useful if you need to share a screen and zoom in to show formulas | www.brightcarbon.com/blog/magnify-or-zoom-into-any-content-or-screen-in-windows/ |