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jcaranibar
Helper I
Helper I

Order in fields pane

How can I see the fields located in fields pane, in order spacified in the data source, rather than alphabetical order.

 

JCA

11 REPLIES 11
Phil_Seamark
Microsoft Employee
Microsoft Employee

You can do this by taking advantage of the [Sort by other column] feature.

 

Check out the solution to this question : 

 

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Desktop/Stacked-graph-sort-order/m-p/62297/highlight/true#M25651

 

Follow it and it will control the order of the fields as well.

 

 


To learn more about DAX visit : aka.ms/practicalDAX

Proud to be a Datanaut!

Anonymous
Not applicable

The OP asked about the order of field names in the Fields pane, not in a visualization.

Yes, the [Sort by Column] option also controls that.

 

It can

  • control the order items are displayed on an axis
  • the order items are displayed in a legend
  • the order of wedges/blocks in clustered column and pie visuals (etc)
  • and, it also controls the order that fieldnames are displayed in the Fields pane

See the images below to see what I mean.

 

  • data.pngfield pane.png

 


To learn more about DAX visit : aka.ms/practicalDAX

Proud to be a Datanaut!

Anonymous
Not applicable

Thanks for the clarification Phil.

 

So if I understand it correctly, the solution is to:

 

1. create a new table with the 3 values as shown, 

2. create a relationship for every query to that table,

3. set the desired order for every column

 

I appreciate the option, but for me this is too ham fisted and I would not likely bother.   In one file alone I have 8 queries with well over 100 columns in total.

It would be a pain if you have lots and lots as you say.

 

I had models where I've perhaps wanted to override the default sorting on just a small number of columns at the most.  Sorry about that.

 

Phil


To learn more about DAX visit : aka.ms/practicalDAX

Proud to be a Datanaut!

This thread is getting a bit dated, but here's my 2 cents,

You can rename the fields.  Give them alphabetically ordered names.  Yeah, well, probably not practical.  But they could be prefixed with numbers.

 

They would then appear in the FIELDS list in order.  But that just pushes the problem off to the end users who would probably not want extraneous numbers on the column headings in their reports.

 

It's worth noting JasperReports had the ability to customize the order in the Field list more than a decade ago.  Wake up MS!  When I have a location dimension I'd really like to have the address fields in standard order: Name, Address1, Address2, City, State, Zip.  Not alphabetic: Address1, Address2, City, Name, State, Zip.

 

Hi,

Within tables, I would hate renaming my fields since they are straightforward for Q&A, formulae, etc.

 

To find them effectively, the first thing I do after I import new tables is to jump to relationship view, hide all columns I will not use (not only ID/key columns but also very often numbers since I always work with measures, and dates since I work with one global related date table). 

I then group fields into folders and subfolders

Capture.JPG

 

 

but I would love to group tables in folders within the report view...as well as move my date table to top

This is the best solution, thanks: kudos!

Anonymous
Not applicable

Surprisingly I could not find this raised as an idea so I have done that here:

 

 

https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/18355429-use-field-order-as-order...

 

Nothing surprises me any more, eg. the fact that 4 years later it hasn't been addressed!

v-sihou-msft
Microsoft Employee
Microsoft Employee

@jcaranibar

 

In Power BI Desktop, data fields are always in alphabetical order in Dataset. It's default behavior by design. Currently, it's not supported to control/set the order. For your requirement, you may sumbit a feature request on Ideas: https://support.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi

 

Regards,

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