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Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
5 years ago
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Difference between blank and empty in advanced filtering

Hi everyone, I'm seeing a new dropdown option in the advanced filtering of dimensions. What's the difference between "blank" and "empty"?    
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  • lbendlin's avatar
    lbendlin
    5 years ago

    Kudo for your eagle eyes - this is a new setting in the service.  BLANK is the equivalent of null, while "empty"  is the equivalent of "" (an empty string). 

lbendlin's avatar
lbendlin
Super User
5 years ago

Kudo for your eagle eyes - this is a new setting in the service.  BLANK is the equivalent of null, while "empty"  is the equivalent of "" (an empty string). 

  • joglidden2's avatar
    joglidden2
    Post Patron
    3 years ago

    So,

    If field is NULL or EMPTY STRING, then ISEMPTY = 1

    If field is EMPTY STRING, then ISBLANK = 0, and ISEMPTY = 1

    Would you agree?

    • lbendlin's avatar
      lbendlin
      Super User
      3 years ago

      interesting...

       

      So even though the value in Column 1 is BLANK() the table itself is not EMPTY.  

       

      That means ISEMPTY() indicates that the filter column has no selectable values. My initial reply was incorrect.

      • joglidden2's avatar
        joglidden2
        Post Patron
        3 years ago

        I wasn't trying to call you out, I just can't quite figure out the rhyme/reason. When in doubt (which is usually), and when I have the opportunity, I just AND the ISEMPTY, ISBLANK. Sometimes I only get the ISEMPTY option, and then I go with that. Too lazy to dive into the documentation, but the PBI lingo is confusing (compared to say, SQL).