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The April 2019 update to Power BI introduces a new concept: the ability to make the value of a property dynamic. Other welcome new changes include M Intellisense, data profiling in query editor and cross-report drill-down.
- The April 2019 Update to Power BI Desktop
- Conditional titles for visuals and conditional URLs
- Intellisense in the M Query Editor Language
- Data profiling in Query Editor (this blog)
- Cross-report drill-through
- Fuzzy merging
- Power BI Dataflows
- Other changes in the April 2019 update
- Power BI features waiting in preview, as of April 2019
For a cumulative list of all of the updates to Power BI Desktop in the last few years see this blog, or have a look at the Power BI courses that we run.
Posted by Andy Brown on 18 April 2019
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Data profiling in Query Editor
This has emerged from a few months in preview darkness, blinking into the light.
Suppose you've loaded a list of Abba songs (surely a typical use for Power BI?), and you want to know at a glance how reliable the data is:

Mamma mia! The songs look good, but what are all those gaps?
You can let your mouse linger over the thin bluey-green strip to see an analysis of the quality of any column:

Two album names are missing.
From here it's really easy to decide what to do about the missing (or in some cases, duplicate) data:

You could choose this option, for example, to remove any rows with no album names.
But you could go further. How about a histogram showing the distribution of column values?

These column distributions show the distribution of values in each column.
Or even a full breakdown for any column you click on?

This is called a column profile.
You can turn these - and more - options on by ticking the appropriate boxes on the View tab of the Query Editor ribbon:

These are the two options I ticked to get the features shown above.
All in all, a really nice, quick, simple way to check for obvious errors in your data before you start trying to tidy it up!
- The April 2019 Update to Power BI Desktop
- Conditional titles for visuals and conditional URLs
- Intellisense in the M Query Editor Language
- Data profiling in Query Editor (this blog)
- Cross-report drill-through
- Fuzzy merging
- Power BI Dataflows
- Other changes in the April 2019 update
- Power BI features waiting in preview, as of April 2019