Forum Discussion
Stop Summarising Data in visualisation
When I create a table visualisation from a query, a lot of stuff seems to be going on behind the scenes: its not just the table of results that is displayed but some summarised version of it. Rows seem to be automatically aggregated depending on the structure I choose for the columns and this also affects the context for measures I create that include aggregations, I kinda get what's going on but I'm not quite clear. I am also unclear about how aggregation functions work in measures with regard to the row calculation vs the Totals calculation; counting distinct values for example.
I can't find any documentation specifying the design behaviour for these features, can anybody help me to find this?
6 Replies
If you have a column in a table that only contains numbers, Power BI will assume you intend to sum the values in this column when grouping by something like date etc.
You can override this on the modelling tab but clicking your field and then choosing "Don't summarize" (or something else).
Does that help a little?
Hi Phil I don't have this "Default Summarization: Don't summarize" under my Modelling tab ... does anyone perhaps know why? Thanks!
Thanks for the reply,
- this feature is greyed out for me (whether I have a table selected or not).
- Even if I have no number field selected, text fields are still grouped left to right
- If I try to count distinct values in the Values area, I get different behaviour for the rows and the totals which I am unclear about. Is this not documented?
- So there is no documentation about this basic feature that you are aware of?
The option to set the default aggregation should be enabled when you have a column or field selected that is a numeric field.
In terms of documentation, there are some good, guided learning pages here :
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/guided-learning/
and the Power BI Documentation is here
https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-landing-page/
and
