The main new features for BI workers in the November 2016 Power BI update
Part four of a seven-part series of blogs

A summary of the new features in the November 2016 Power BI Update, omitting things which are still only in preview.

  1. Power BI Desktop - November 2016 update
  2. Dropdown slicers - the new list option
  3. Conditional formatting now available for matrices
  4. Formatting table and matrix columns (this blog)
  5. Changing the colour of axis titles and labels
  6. Prevent hierarchy axis label concatenation
  7. Forecasting now extended to Power BI Service

You can see a list of all updates going back to November 2016 (this update) here.

Posted by Andy Brown on 19 December 2016

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Formatting table and matrix columns

This feature allows you to colour table and matrix columns.  Below are a couple of examples (the feature is more powerful for tables than it is for matrices).

Example of formatting table columns

Each of the 3 columns in the following ugly table has different column formatting settings:

Example of table column formatting

An example of how you can use column formats to ruin a table!

 

Here are the settings I used for the Quantity column:

Quantity column settings

For the Quantity column, I've chosen to use the colours for the header, values and total rows.

 

Formatting columns in a matrix

For a matrix, there are fewer options: 

Coloured totals

Here I've chosen not to format the values (otherwise nearly everything would appear with a purple background).

The settings I've used for the Column Formatting section of this matrix are:

Column formatting

Only the totals are coloured.

 

In case you're wondering, conditional formatting colours override column formatting colours!

  1. Power BI Desktop - November 2016 update
  2. Dropdown slicers - the new list option
  3. Conditional formatting now available for matrices
  4. Formatting table and matrix columns (this blog)
  5. Changing the colour of axis titles and labels
  6. Prevent hierarchy axis label concatenation
  7. Forecasting now extended to Power BI Service
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