Make your Power BI Visual POP with this column header trick

There are different ways to change column headers for a table or matrix visual in Power BI. Adam covers a few common ways and leave you with a trick to make the visual POP!


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[Baldur]

Well I am still waiting for dynamic (programable) column headers and formatting

[Daedana]

The tips on the very basic renaming of headers inside tables saved my day!

[marshallwaters]

Building on this, you can also use the Windows Emoji Picker (Windows key + Period key) to insert symbols into the display names of fields, which include arrows, and red/green/yellow dots🔴🟩 and squares, among other symbols. You can also insert characters from other fonts like the Symbol font. I use Word to find and insert a special character →, than copy and paste it into the field label in Power BI.

[ITyraxI]

Interesting, title made me expect a more "aesthetic" thing tho.

[tomduffhues]

Very interesting to get user to drill down! Especially when they are inexperienced with PowerBI. Thanks Adam!

[matthewthiele]

My databases usually have underscores. It previously took take me forever to make them more presentable. Here is a quick way of removing the underscore and making them proper case in Power Query. Go to the advanced editor and replace the last bit with:
, Proper = Table.TransformColumnNames(#"Source", Text.Proper),

ReplaceUnderscore = Table.TransformColumnNames(#"Proper", each Text.Replace(_, "_", " "))

in

ReplaceUnderscore
*Make sure to replace #"Source" with the previous step.

[tiagomcdonald]

Never thought about that approach before, even though it's so simple! Thanks Adam!

[amitkumargangwar]

To achieve this, you can just turn off the 'Stepped Layout' in Row Headers options for the matrix. It will start displaying columns names of all sub categories on expanding.

[michellejamison]

This is a very helpful and useful suggestion. Thank you.

[ladylynnet]

Good to know I'm not the only one doing this. Downside is when users export the data, that rename carries through so the Excel column isn't named accurately. Would be nice if the matrix visual did something like this automatically, or had a field in the formatting pane where you could edit what shows there (like titles) without impacting the data field names

[gulhermepereira]

I thought it would change the name dynamically as the user drills down the hierarchy :(

[vyju]

How can we put column header common to 3 column measures in matrix? Please suggest if there is a solution

[rerangelt]

Love the trick. Ey Adam, i miss the Monday roundup!

[satshisats]

"Q" If we have multiple product categories in the columns of the matrix say Product A, Product B and Product C. How do we change the order of columns and make it Product B, Product A and Product C?

[wbird]

Cool! and I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this. Not perfect (like dynamic column headers) but still a cool trick.

[reality]

Hi Adam, could you please make a video on stacked and clustered combined charts in power bi. Power bi doesn't not support Stacked Clustered chart together.

[mindortv]

respect for the Cyberman on the monitor behind you

[BigM]

If you right click on the field, it does come up with the option 'Rename for this Visual'. Same as the double click to rename.

[lakeoffm]

Power BI: doesn’t show the user the ways one can drill down before actually drilling down.
Also Power BI: here’s five ways you can do the stuff we haven’t included in our product because we’re busy working on smth else.

I personally find the trick great, with only one drawback: it will also show up in the title in the tooltip and can get messed up with titles of other levels.

[Simon-vcwk]

Is there anyway to do this dynamically?