My most common mistake while using Power BI.
I recently began revisiting the basics with Power BI. I figured it was time to utilize and leverage the tool and its capabilities.
To be honest, the moment I opened the tool everything felt new. A small reminder of how a tool stack changes with updates over time.
This makes it crucial to stay up to date with updates and blogs regarding the same. The tech world is truly dynamic.
When working inside Power Query to format data, there’s one mistake I’ve commonly been making. I end up interchanging the “Transform“ and “Add Column” Tabs.
Tabs in Power BI are dynamic and change according to selections (Thanks a ton for that Microsoft). Hence, it can get confusing until you establish some familiarity.
The “Transform” Tab applies any changes made to the currently selected column itself. Whereas, the “Add Column” Tab applies changes by introducing a new column.
Ex: Let’s assume you have a DOB and Age within the same column.
I’d use the transform tab in case I wanted to keep just the Age and didn’t need the DOB at all for future analysis.
But I’d use the add column tab in case I want to create a new column called Age, while still wanting to retain the DOB.
Luckily I can undo and delete steps where I perform the wrong transformation. But still, I’d like to avoid this amateur mistake in the future lol.
Have you ever faced the same issue? Let me know how you tackle these kinds of issues in the comments below :)
#data #powerbi #powerquery