Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Register now to learn Fabric in free live sessions led by the best Microsoft experts. From Apr 16 to May 9, in English and Spanish.

Reply
Dimani
Helper I
Helper I

Formatting multiple columns at the same time?

Hello

 

In Power Query, is it possible to format multiple columns/fields at the same time.  We will be using the same format for all those interested columns/fields, and all of them are numeric fields.  We would like the negative number to be shown in () instead of the negative sign.  We want whole numbers.

 

So far I have found these two functions in Power BI, but not sure we can apply specific format masks to them.

Number.FromText

Text.Format

 

Thanks

 

D

3 REPLIES 3
ronrsnfld
Super User
Super User

I do not believe that is possible. In general, you cannot format a datatype in Power Query without changing the datatype to a text string. This is different from Power BI and/or Excel where you can format a number or date in a variety of ways, and it still remains a number or date. If just for display purposes, you can use Number.ToText for certain types of formatting, but you would have to construct a string if you wanted to display negative numbers with (). Again, these values will not be numeric and would need to be converted back to numbers if you were to use them in a subsequent calculation.

Thanks for your information.  We were wishing there was an easier way.  I will discuss this with my colleague to see if we want to use this approach, knowing that when we need to perform calculation, we will need to convert the data back to numeric.

In general, I think of PQ as something used to shape your data, and Power BI to display formatted reports. Trying to do the formatting in PQ would be an inefficient use of the tool.

Helpful resources

Announcements
Microsoft Fabric Learn Together

Microsoft Fabric Learn Together

Covering the world! 9:00-10:30 AM Sydney, 4:00-5:30 PM CET (Paris/Berlin), 7:00-8:30 PM Mexico City

PBI_APRIL_CAROUSEL1

Power BI Monthly Update - April 2024

Check out the April 2024 Power BI update to learn about new features.

April Fabric Community Update

Fabric Community Update - April 2024

Find out what's new and trending in the Fabric Community.

Top Solution Authors
Top Kudoed Authors