Forum Discussion
Hide/Show Column in Table Visual Matrix on Report
The easy way to have the years show, or not show, is to have a good data model design. If you have 1 column of data for every year in the underlying source table, this won’t work. This is also not a good design. Instead you should unpivot the data into 2 columns, one that states the year and the other that has the values. Then you place the year column from the table I to the columns in the matrix, and it will do what you want.
MattAllington I currently have my data structured "tall and thin" and am using a matrix visual to achieve the "wide" view in Power BI which allows users to select / de-select which metrics (shown as columns) they want to view, but they have the additional requirement that they need to be able to export the table and have it look the same, which, as far as I can tell, requires that my underlying data be "flat". Once I do this, they lose the ability to select/de-select metrics, and the volume of metrics/combinations that a use could select is too many to use the bookmark option.
Any suggestions for alternative solutions?
Why do they need to export the data to look at it? Can it be seen in power BI? What do they get that is different when exported that they don’t get in power BI? Have you considered using Analyze in Excel?
MattAllington - they need to export the data because they make notes on each row during review sessions. We've tried to explore solutions where they make the notes in another form (i.e.: sharepoint, separate excel file...) while viewing the results on the report on-screen but have been hammered with negative feedback about the experience of having to have 2 documents open and lined up (read results from row 24, make notes in row 24 in the 2nd document...).
I have not explored Analyze in Excel as our users do not have Power BI Pro licenses.
So how do they access the reports if they don't have pro licences? Presumably Power BI Premium.
Have you tried Export to PDF or PowerPoint? There is also some commenting features in Dashboards, but I doubt that will do it for you. I suspect there is not currently a simple solution.