Forum Discussion
Matrix with Two Row Fields acting as 2 Columns
I am trying to recreate a report from another system where the coulumns are seperated instead of being concatenated, so I wanted to mantain the same report structure instead of merging the columns. But from what I see it seems to be impossible with Power BI, so i've settled for concatenating the columns which is the closest thing to what I want.
Hi Tiyani ,
Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft Fabric Community forum.
The Matrix is still fundamentally a hierarchical visual, so sometimes it doesn’t behave like a true tabular structure especially when you’re trying to force multiple row fields into separate flat columns.
In such cases, you have a couple of practical work arounds:
1. Switch to a Table visual
If your requirement is strictly to have something like:
Device Name | Brand Name | Date1 | Date2
with no hierarchy or grouping behavior, then using a Table visual might be a better fit. Tables are inherently flat and don’t try to group fields like the Matrix does.
2. Create a concatenated column
Another common approach is to create a new column by combining Device Name and Brand Name, for example:
Device Brand = [device_name] & " | " & [brand_name]You can then use this single field in your Rows section. This avoids hierarchy altogether and gives you a cleaner, more controlled display.
I hope this information helps. Please do let us know if you have any further queries.
Thank you
I understand the limitations of the matrix visual from your explaination.
A table visual can't cut it because I need to have values under Data1, Date2 as explained in my description. Look at the picture below for reference.
The cancatinating solution is what I am currently using which I did via SQL.Hi Tiyani ,
Concatenating the fields is probably the best possible workaround for your situation. Just checking is there any reason this approach wouldn’t work for your use case?
RegardsI am trying to recreate a report from another system where the coulumns are seperated instead of being concatenated, so I wanted to mantain the same report structure instead of merging the columns. But from what I see it seems to be impossible with Power BI, so i've settled for concatenating the columns which is the closest thing to what I want.