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

The Power BI Data Visualization World Championships is back! Get ahead of the game and start preparing now! Learn more

Reply
ahrensims
New Member

Numbers to string for chart axis

I have order #'s in Excel, and would like them to come in to Power BI as a string. Even when I format the font in Excel to be a string, they keep coming into Power BI as sumarized numeric fields. I would like to show the order #'s as an axis in a chart, with a count of product ID's. How can I do that?

3 REPLIES 3
andre
Memorable Member
Memorable Member

In Excel Power Pivot you can click on a column then go to Advanced->Summarize By->Do Not Summarize.  This feature is still missing in Desktop but hopefully it will be coming there soon.

Greg_Deckler
Community Champion
Community Champion

Sounds like you need to use Power BI Desktop or Excel where you can set the type of column to Text or perhaps create a calculated column using CONCATENATE or other function to force a string.



Follow on LinkedIn
@ me in replies or I'll lose your thread!!!
Instead of a Kudo, please vote for this idea
Become an expert!: Enterprise DNA
External Tools: MSHGQM
YouTube Channel!: Microsoft Hates Greg
Latest book!:
DAX For Humans

DAX is easy, CALCULATE makes DAX hard...

Right. I ended up concatenating # & Field, which made it recognized as a string.

Helpful resources

Announcements
November Power BI Update Carousel

Power BI Monthly Update - November 2025

Check out the November 2025 Power BI update to learn about new features.

Fabric Data Days Carousel

Fabric Data Days

Advance your Data & AI career with 50 days of live learning, contests, hands-on challenges, study groups & certifications and more!

FabCon Atlanta 2026 carousel

FabCon Atlanta 2026

Join us at FabCon Atlanta, March 16-20, for the ultimate Fabric, Power BI, AI and SQL community-led event. Save $200 with code FABCOMM.