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powerrdl's avatar
powerrdl
Helper I
9 years ago
Solved

Bug in COUNT function?

  I am getting same output with COUNT and COUNTA functions for all columns of above data. COUNT(Locn) gives output as 5 even though there are 4 entries and no numeric entry. Not getting error ...
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  • v-haibl-msft's avatar
    v-haibl-msft
    9 years ago

    Anonymous

     

    COUNTA can count TRUE/FALSE column but COUNT still raises an error.

     

    Best Regards,
    Herbert

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
9 years ago

Hi powerrdl

First lets start with your "Edit Queries" section of Power BI.  There is a button for that on the Ribbon under Home.

 

Your table should look something like this if it is correct:

 

See how row 2 for Locn is coming up as null?  That what i'm hoping to see in your data, but i'm expecting in your data source that it might not be showing that.  Right clicking on Locn here is where the Trim option is from my earlier post.

powerrdl's avatar
powerrdl
Helper I
9 years ago

Hi Anonymous

 

I was importing data from a CSV, when I changed it to Excel, started getting 'null' as desired and count as 4 !!

 

But I still have a confusion, definition of COUNT on MSDN site says : The COUNT function counts the number of cells in a column that contain numbers. 

 

As per a video of Curbal : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8wYTjKyvgk , it gives error when used with Text column, then how come here it is counting text too ?

 

Regards

Rameen

 

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable
    9 years ago

    Yeah thats a real mystery to me too.  I've never played with it enough to notice.  You are right about what MSDN says and I don't see it behaving this way.

     

    Still, at least you learned something about the nulls!

    • powerrdl's avatar
      powerrdl
      Helper I
      9 years ago

      So back to my original question -- Is it a BUG ?!! Or has the functionality been changed ?

       

      Regards

      Rameen

      • v-jiascu-msft's avatar
        v-jiascu-msft
        Microsoft Employee
        9 years ago

        powerrdl

         

        Hi,

         

        “Count” acts strange in Power BI, which is different from the documents. I have reported it internally to Power BI Team and I will post here as soon as I get feedback.

         

         

         

        Best Regards!

        Dale