fabianevalencia's avatar
fabianevalencia
New Member
9 years ago
Status:
Needs Votes

Formatting True/False data

Boolean columns or measures are shown as True or False. That from a computer programming perspective is perfectly fine, we know 1 or 0, True or False. But for a dashboard that is meant to be used by other people, it does not seem like the friendliest option. Instead of True/False, why not allow Boolean collumns to be shown as Yes/No, Y/N. Consider a column called IsHedged and values of True. Does it read better as IsHedged = No or IsHedged = false or Ishedged = N.
power bi

11 Comments

  • r_fisher1's avatar
    r_fisher1
    New Member
    6 years ago
    This is absolutely a great idea and well expressed. I'm looking at this problem right now, users wish to see "yes" or "no" or another variation, true or false rarely works?
  • aolcina1's avatar
    aolcina1
    New Member
    6 years ago
    If your language is different from English, it could be translated the text true or false ( show "verdadero"/"falso" o "Si"/"No" in Spanish). Even a differentiating icon or a check, to make it independent of the language.
  • thomas_eisenzop's avatar
    thomas_eisenzop
    New Member
    5 years ago
    @Amando I agree, language depending display of different texts (true/false, yes/no, open/closed, ...) would be great. At least a possibility to define user specific texts for a column to be displayed instead of TRUE/FALSE.
  • nishalit's avatar
    nishalit
    New Member
    4 years ago
    For bit/bool data type columns, allow some new formating selections to show as 'Yes/No;On/Off;ect' to expidite the necessity of a new custom conditional calculated column.
  • nishalit's avatar
    nishalit
    New Member
    4 years ago
    Display boolean (true/false) values in tables and matrix visuals as a check (instead of the literals true/false)
  • greg30's avatar
    greg30
    New Member
    4 years ago

    This is so totally needed. Otherwise, you have to duplicate all the boolean columns, just to have a calculated column to show what should be displayed. That adds greatly to model complexity, adds to size, and increases processing time, really for no reason.


    For example, column might be Is Acceptable but perhaps the data needs to show OK or blank.

  • robert_hawke's avatar
    robert_hawke
    New Member
    4 years ago

    please give us some formatting options for boolean fields so that we can save the data model size. Storing Yes/No increases the column size by factor 10!!! And currently we either have to provide bad user experience with True/False or use Yes/No and get bloated data models.


    The best would be if we can just type any two strings into the Ribbon Field Format field and it would automatically use those. Power BI already lets me enter something there and it saves. But it does not get applied to visuals.


    Examples:

    Yes / No

    On / Off

    Enabled / Disabled

  • FRANK_WANG's avatar
    FRANK_WANG
    New Member
    1 year ago

    Much needed feature. Please provide some default options to display True/False boolean values as Yes/No, Y/N, On/Off, Open/Closed, Enabled/Disabled, etc. Even better to allow custom format strings (just like what the date/time data type already supports).


    There are not many votes here, not because this feature is not needed, but because the customers currently can get by with a calculated column translating True/False to Yes/No or whatever they need. But that inflates the data model and results in an ugly solution.


    On top of this idea, how about add another Power BI function "Display as"? Just like Power BI allows you to sort one column by another column, maybe allow to display the values of a column based on another lookup table manually entered in Power Query as part of the data model? I think that will be a generic solution to many problems currently faced by many silent customers!

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