Forum Discussion
Microsoft Azure's map can identify incorrect postal codes - where data?
Azure Maps geocoding is a black-box service: Power BI sends your location fields to the geocoder and gets back coordinates. Microsoft/Azure doesn’t publish the full country+postal reference dataset used for geocoding, and Power BI doesn’t expose it.
What you’re seeing is normal geocoder behavior: if the postal code is invalid for the supplied country (or the country hint isn’t applied strongly enough), it may fallback and resolve the postal code somewhere else (often the US if it’s a valid US ZIP).
Practical ways to reduce wrong matches:
Use the correct field category: set Country to Country/Region and Postal to Postal code.
Prefer 2-letter ISO country codes (AT) over 3-letter (AUT) if possible; some geocoders handle them more reliably.
Add more context (City/State/Region) so the geocoder has less ambiguity.
Best: bring your own lat/long (or a reference table that maps valid postal+country to lat/long) and plot by coordinates. That bypasses geocoding entirely.
Without the country in hierarchy I get the exact same behavior.
Filter on AUT as country or whether that location starts with AUT, you get nothing
And the data definitely contains locations associated with that filter context as it can be seen in a table visual.
Edit -> Didn't know USA + 00638 is actually puerto rico, so that seems fine. But filtering on Austria gets me nothing. Using another visual to cross filter doesn't get me anything either.
Hi DouweMeer ,
mmmh, interesting. I just added the postal codes from your sample data to my sample data. I know that this doesn't help you, but your postal codes work fine too within my solution and are located in Austria by Azure Maps.
But it might help if you take a closer look at my sample file: AzureMaps_InvalidPostalCodes.pbix
If my sample doesn't work for you, I would look for the causes in the following places:
- Power BI version? Mine is Version: 2.149.1429.0 64-bit (November 2025)
- Are you working with Power BI Desktop oder Service? I used Power BI Desktop
- Power BI configuration? I'm not sure which settings might influence the Azure Maps behaviour
If my sample works for you, there must be a difference between your and my sample file. What I would do:
- Copy my table and Azure Maps visual to your sample and check if it works
- Use your data with the copy of my Azure Maps visual
- Use your Azure Maps visual with my data
- Compare the settings of your and mine Azure Data visual
Independent from my solution I'm not completely sure what you mean by "Filter on AUT as country or whether that location starts with AUT":
- How do you do the filtering on AUT? Does only Azure Maps show no locations in Austria or is it the same if you visualize your data in a table visual?
- What do you mean by "starts with AUT"? The location string you assign to location should look like the following: "1030,AUT"
Hope that helps!