Display text in table/matrix without removing whitespace

[JeanMartinL]

Hello everyone,

I have some text that include some "manual" formating with \n and spaces. It seems to load correctly in the dataset:

But when I use it in a visual like a Table or Matrix, the whitespace are automatically trimmed.

With a Card visual there is a "Source spacing" option which looks like it could work but as far as can tell there is no way to align left so it's hard to tell. Anyway Cards are very limited and probably wouldn't be sufficient for my needs.

Is there a way to display text "as is" in a table or matrix?

Edit:

Small addendum: I can make it work using a custom visual "Text Wrapper by MAQ Software" so it's definitely not a issue with the data itself. However just like the card it's very limiting and I really wish there was a solution for the table/matrix.

Thanks!

[MFelix · Accepted solution]

Hi @JeanMartinL ,

The problem here is that the spaces get trimmed in this case you need to replace the space by the empty character.

You can copy paste from this link:

https://emptycharacter.com/

Has you can see below I have two rows one with the spaces and the empty character:

In this I have made a replace values:

= Table.ReplaceValue(#"Added Custom"," ","<u+200f><u+200f><u+200e> <u+200e>",Replacer.ReplaceText,{"Custom"})

Table.ReplaceValue(#"Added

 nbsp;e.ReplaceValue(#"Added

nbsp;e.ReplaceValue(#"Added

The text seems the same thing but is from the white space.

[TannerPolzin]

I accomplished this in a similar way to MFelix. Power BI will trim the leading spaces on a new line, but it won't trim "non breaking spaces." And Power Query has an easy way to turn normal spaces into non-breaking spaces.

For my purposes, I made the indents in excel using 3 or 4 spaces. I had Power Query change every double space into two non-breaking spaces.

You can actually accomplish this from the GUI.

[JeanMartinL]

Well done! That's a tricky solution that I never thought about.

This works perfectly for my needs, thanks!