Forum Discussion
Rename column headers in a table
how did you go with this? Did you get it to work?
I managed to get dynamic columns names using this https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34858733/dynamically-rename-a-set-of-columns-using-power-query
But unfortunately when you add it to the report, once the column name changes the report breaks because it's expecting the previous column name :(
Dynamically updating column names based on a mapping table could be super useful if only the output worked not just with flat Excel tables, but also with Power BI reports and Excel pivot tables!
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem so. Strangely enough, this limitation/bug reported in 2015 still seems to be the 'state-of-the-art':
"When you rename a column in the Query Editor of Power BI.., it implicitly triggers the column references in your reports to be updated. However, when you rename columns through some dynamic logic, this mechanism isn't triggered and the column references in reports are broken. ... this looks like a bug - you should send a frown..." [2015]
"When I rename columns it breaks the tables I have made. It says all of the columns in the table are invalid and I have to redrag the newly named columns to get it to work again. Is there a way to get around this?" [2018]
Does anyone know a good workaround to keep column references in the visuals after applying such a bulk rename step to the query?