Creating relationship without unique values

[tstackhouse]

Hello All, 

I have been try to create a relationship between two columns in power BI but I am getting the message "You cant create a relationship between these two columsn because one of the columns must have unique values".

 I have created the same relationship in Tableu and built a report with a few measures to verify aginst existing reports (which did match)

I have tried to look this up on the forums but I do not seem to have found a solution that works for me. Below I have two snaps from Power Bi and Tableu to give a visual.

Thanks,

Ty

[Faye1901]

Hi there,

I have a similar problem which I can't seem to resolve with this solution. I also want to create a relationship without unique values. Steps I've taken:
1. Appended query from my two tables - this didn't append properly as both my columns [Project Code] appeared separately but nonetheless I then ...
2. Removed all other columns but the [Project Code 1] and [Project Code 2] that I wanted to append.
Now I get two columns with corresponding null values in each column - see below. If I filter one or other column to remove the nulls the corresponding column reduces in length so I lose my data. Any idea how I can remove the nulls from each column and append as one? Or do I need to understand why the Append Query as new didn't work in the first place?

Thanks
Faye

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi @tstackhouse

Power BI supports, 1:1, 1:M, M:1 relationships only, not M :M. But there is a work around for this.

Option 1. Create a relationship/ bridge table to handleM:M

Option 2. Create a Unique column in your current tables ( For example: By concatenating 2 columns to make the values unique).

Thanks

Raj 

[derydebs]

I have the same problem but this time with dates. I have two different tables I want to show these records on a single line graph showing how they both performed on specific dates. Obviously this means some dates will have multiple records. So it will not be unique. How do i go around this?

[Firrhos]

Hello,

I think this is what you are looking for. 🙂 https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/cansql/2016/12/19/relationships-in-power-bi-fixing-one-of-the-co...

Hope it helps.

Kind regards,

Tristan