Don't Summarize....still summarizes...?

[sebaumgardner]

Hello all!

I am a rank beginner in PowerBI-- so much so that I'm still going through the (official?) tutorial worksheet here. I am trying to do the visualization part of the tutorial and I cannot find the option to simply display the values in a line or bar chart.

The tutorial shows the Y axis measures as the simple values taken from the table. When I try this, I only get options for some kind of summarization value, even though I have all the columns marked "don't summarize" in the table view. I can use the "max" or "min" summarization to give me the actual values, but I'd rather learn the proper way of doing this instead of sort of cheating the system (a la "it's the minimum value! And also the maximum value!") 

Some screenshots, for reference-- first one (with red annotations) is taken from the tutorial; second one is what it looks like when I attempt this (with the flyout menu showing that there's no "just plain value" option)

 

Thanks for your time and patience!

[v-tejrama]

Hi @sebaumgardner ,

Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.

In Power BI, when you use a numeric column like “Crime,” it defaults to aggregation usually sum, average, or count. If you just drag it into a visual and see “Count of Crime,” it’s counting how many values exist, not the actual crime numbers. What you likely want is to change the aggregation to “Sum” so the chart shows total crime per state.

To do that, just click on “Count of Crime” in the Y-axis well and switch it to “Sum.” This will show total instead of a flat or constant line.

If the field is meant to be shown as is without any summarization, you can right click the field in the Data pane, go to “Default summarization,” and set it to “Don’t summarize,” but note that this only applies in certain visuals like tables  not in visuals that require aggregation like line charts.

Please find the attached pbix file for youe reference.

If the response has addressed your query, please Accept it as a solution and give a 'Kudos' so other members can easily find it

Best Regards,
Tejaswi.
Community Support Team.

[sebaumgardner]

In this specific dataset, the values in each column are a "score" out of 100 (e.g., they already represent an aggregate of many sources).

The data table is extremely simple-- a 50 row column that lists fifty states and a few other  50 row columns, each with a single value in each row showing how the state scores in "crime", "tax burden", etc. Each column is marked as "whole number" and each has "Don't Summarize" selected.

This is part of Microsoft's tutorial series on PowerBI-- it's not for any real application beyond learning how to import data, do extremely basic shaping operations, create data displays, and then publish a report. I am stuck on the "create displays" step.

I just want to have a bar chart (or line chart) that uses the actual values of the data, as the tutorial I linked above claims I should be able to do. The closest I can currently get is to display the "minimum" value--which works because there is only one value per row (state) and column (metric of suitability for retirement). Your example uses "sum", but it's the same principle: I don't want to display the sum-- even of a single value.  I want to display the value itself, without any sort of aggregation applied to it, no matter how degenerate that operation may be. I am starting to suspect that the problems I am having are because each row/column address has only a single value, but the tutorial does not treat this as an issue, so I am very, very confused.

How did you attach that file? I'd be perfectly happy to upload the pbix so you can see it for yourself, but I cannot find a button that will allow me to do so.

Thanks!

[v-tejrama]

Hi @sebaumgardner ,

Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum

The issue was that the Crime values weren't showing in the visual because they weren't aggregated properly.

In Power BI, when using bar or line charts, we must summarize numeric columns like Crime using Sum, Average, or similar aggregations.

“Don’t summarize” works only in visuals like tables or cards. To fix it, I dragged State to the X-axis and Crime to the Y-axis, then selected Sum as the aggregation. Now the line chart renders correctly by showing the sum of crime incidents per state.

Please find the attached pbix file for youe reference.

If the response has addressed your query, please Accept it as a solution and give a 'Kudos' so other members can easily find it

Best Regards,
Tejaswi.
Community Support Team.

[v-tejrama]

Hi @sebaumgardner ,

Just wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the suggestion provided?
If the response has addressed your query, please Accept it as a solution and give a 'Kudos' so other members can easily find it.

Thank you.

Tejaswi.

[sebaumgardner]

So, is your advice to set the fields to Text type?  I'm trying to display the values without summarization-- in other words, without having to specify any sort of aggregate like min or max.

[Elena_Kalina]

As an option, yes. You can either use numerical values for the x-axis or create measures.

To better assist you, could you share an example of your report? This way, I can provide more tailored recommendations.

[Elena_Kalina]

Hi @sebaumgardner 

Based on your screenshots, I can see you've already set the column to "Don't Summarize" (as indicated by the lack of aggregation icons ∑)

Power BI's engine fundamentally treats:

• Numeric fields in Values → Must aggregate

• Text fields → Display as discrete values

• "Don't Summarize" only affects table visuals by default

If this post helps, then please consider Accepting as solution to help the other members find it more quickly, don't forget to give a "Kudos" – I’d truly appreciate it! 

Thank you.