Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

The Power BI Data Visualization World Championships is back! Get ahead of the game and start preparing now! Learn more

Reply
ssbagley
Helper III
Helper III

Distinct Count (Direct Query) - Why is this so hard!?

Hi - me again.  Source data is employee expense submissions in a SQL table via Direct Query.  I want to count the number of expense reports by employee for a given date range (slicer).  I've tried:

= Countrows(Summarize(Expenses, Expenses[ReportNumber]) )

= DISTINCTCOUNT (Expenses[ReportNumber] )

= COUNTROWS(DISTINCT(SELECTCOLUMNS(FILTER(Expenses,Expenses[ReportNumber]<>0),"Reports",Expenses[ReportNumber])))

 

I know this has to be possible -- what am I doing wrong??

6 REPLIES 6
PVO3
Impactful Individual
Impactful Individual

Im sorry. Instead of primairy key i meant your name column. But im afraid this operation over this column has performance issues

I don't want to countrows of the name column though because one name may have 500 unique expense reports.  I want to identify the number of expense reports per person (not number of expense submissions). 

PVO3
Impactful Individual
Impactful Individual

So then do COUNTROWS(ALL(Expenses[ReportNumber]))

That doesn't work, but I figured it out anyway.  Thanks!

PVO3
Impactful Individual
Impactful Individual

COUNTROWS(ALL('Table'[Primairy key])) is working fine for me

This displayed the same value for every employee which is not correct, but it did return a result which is an improvement from my previous attempts!

Helpful resources

Announcements
Power BI DataViz World Championships

Power BI Dataviz World Championships

The Power BI Data Visualization World Championships is back! Get ahead of the game and start preparing now!

December 2025 Power BI Update Carousel

Power BI Monthly Update - December 2025

Check out the December 2025 Power BI Holiday Recap!

FabCon Atlanta 2026 carousel

FabCon Atlanta 2026

Join us at FabCon Atlanta, March 16-20, for the ultimate Fabric, Power BI, AI and SQL community-led event. Save $200 with code FABCOMM.