PowerBI & Spatial Data Questions

[residentx]

I used Powerbi in the past and had good experiences. I've noticed changes and I'm spending the weekend trying to learn the new Powerbi. 

This is what I'm trying to investigate. I need to create bounded borders of Zipcodes worldwide inside of counties. I'm starting with the US. Moving along, I have this dataset for Maryland but when I import the table, PowerBI classifies my zipcode list as a count list.  How do I turn off the count feature and restore my original zipcode list dataset? 

I did this on Filled and Azure Maps

Thanks in advance for your comments

[danextian]

If you are trying to show bounded borders then zip codes are not enough. You must use multipolygons. There are free shape map files from GADM.org but they may not be updated.

[residentx]

I found how to change the zipcodes but I cannot find how to turn on the maps settings in powerbi. I searched maps but nothing comes up. Asking me to create an Azure account is not an option for me. 

[residentx]

Can I ask some new questions? 

1. I searched "Maps" in Powerbi and Azure but nothing came up in the tenants to turn on the maps features. 

[residentx]

2. PowerBI used to be a part of Office 365. Has it been separated? I installed the desktop version on my local machine but I guess that cannot access the map services. 

3. Why would I used/sub this service when I could just sub a service that had it all in one package? ESRI now has a free account and it works in Excel. Honestly, this was the only reason I used powerbi. If I could do everything in Excel I would. PBI is not supported on any other platforms except for Microsoft. What is the rationale for some of these decisions? 

[v-hjannapu]

Hi @residentx ,
Thank you  for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.

The ZIP code issue is happening because Power BI is automatically treating the ZIP code column as a numeric field and applying aggregation like Count/Sum. Changing the column type to Text and setting Don’t summarize is the correct approach.

Regarding the map issue, from the error message in your screenshot, it looks like the Map and Filled Map visuals are disabled in the tenant settings. This setting can only be enabled by the Power BI/Microsoft 365 admin, so normal users will not see this option in personal settings or search.

Power BI Desktop can still use map visuals, but those visuals depend on Microsoft online map services. If the tenant setting is turned off, the maps will not work even in Desktop.

For your reference, the admin can check this setting here:
Power BI Service → Admin Portal → Tenant Settings → Map and Filled Map visuals

Also, thank you for sharing your feedback regarding the current Power BI experience and comparison with Excel/ESRI. We completely understand your concern.

Please find the attached file for your reference:
Manage Azure Maps Power BI visual within your organization - Microsoft Azure Maps | Microsoft Learn

Hope the above provided information help you resolve the issue, if you have any further concerns or queries, please feel free to reach out to us.
Regards,
Community Support Team.

[residentx]

@v-hjannapu I forgot to add this detail...I'm the tenant administrator, lol. 

I'll do the following steps: 

1. I'll install the powerbi client that is connected to my tenant not the desktop. My original experiences with powerbi were with the desktop and it did everything I needed so I had no need to use the connected version but Microsoft changes things and I'll walk down this road for now. 

2. I have a scenario I should mention. I have 2 office 365 tenants. One were I put my data (Personal Account). The other is a corporate tenant for my business (E3). I had problems working with outside users having to login to see links and files I sent them so I moved my data out of my 365 Corporate tenant to make it easier to work with 3rd parties. 

When I do work now, I do the work local and complete 90% and then I upload into the cloud and do the maintenance. Once in the cloud, then I "Favorite" in Office Applications for greater productivity (fast local large disks, GPUs, and cores machines). 

[v-hjannapu]

Hi @residentx,

Thanks for sharing the additional background. Your workflow and tenant separation approach makes sense, especially for external collaboration scenarios.

Doing most of the development locally first and later publishing to the Service is still a common approach followed by many users, particularly when working with larger datasets and higher-performance local systems.

The multi-tenant setup you described could also explain some of the behavior differences you are seeing between Desktop and Service experiences, especially for cloud-connected features.

Please share your findings after testing further with the tenant-connected environment. That information will help narrow down whether the issue is related to the tenant context or the current Power BI configuration.

Regards,
Community Support Team.

[residentx]

@v-hjannapu First, I don't think I need shapefiles for everything. PowerBI supported ISO standards and so bounded borders I could do. I did this for counties in many countries in powerbi or maybe that was powermap. I need go back into my old files and find that work. 

Moving along, I want post again what I'm trying to do. See the screenshots below 

I have these spreadhsheets of zipcodes but I just need to add a color coded maps of the zip borders to make the data more relevant for impact analysis. Let me do more work on this and post my results. 

[residentx]

Microsoft is evil PERIOD! Do have a product where none of the features work and you only learn about it when you try to use the features. You need to tell users at the start what featrures work and what is needed to be configured. 

[v-hjannapu]

Hi @residentx,
Thanks for sharing the screenshots and explaining the requirement clearly. Now I understand you are mainly trying to highlight ZIP code regions with different colors for analysis purpose.

Power BI can work with ZIP/postal codes, but some map visuals depend on online map services and tenant configuration. Because of this, the behavior may feel different compared to older Power Map/Excel experiences.

Also, as mentioned by @danextian , if you need exact boundary-level control for every ZIP area, then Shape Map with TopoJSON/shapefiles may be needed in some scenarios.

Official Microsoft documentation for reference:
Create Shape Map Visualizations in Power BI Desktop (Preview) - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Please continue your testing and share the results. Your screenshots were very helpful in understanding the scenario.

Regards,
Community Support Team.