Issue with 'Fill Down' Column Appearing Empty in Power BI

[fatimapz]

Hello Power BI Community,

I am experiencing an issue with a column in my table. I am performing data transformations in a dataflow and then uploading the data to Power BI. I have a column that uses the 'fill down' method, which appears correctly filled in the dataflow preview. However, when I load the data into Power BI, this column is empty.

This column is of text type. We have checked the data type and even enforced it, but the issue still persists. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to resolve this?

Thank you in advance!

[collinq]

Hey @fatimapz ,

Just to be sure, you have "refreshed" it in the Service and in Power BI desktop to confirm that the latest version of the data is being seen?  Assuming that is so, when you state that the "column" is empty - do you mean it is entirely blank or do you mean that only the "filled down" bits are blank and that there is data in there?

[fatimapz]

Yes, we have refreshed our dataflow several times and the column is entirely empty.

I believe the issue might be related to how I created the column I'm filling down. The column is based on a condition where we compare values from two different columns and write either an "x" or a null. Could it be that there's an issue with the resulting data type of the column I've created?

Thank you.

[collinq]

Hey @fatimapz ,

I think that fill down works with all types but I guess I use it most with text data types.  And, do you put in the literal "null" or do you put in "" or do you put in " " when you are doing the custom column? 

And then, if you are putting in an "x" then doesn't the fill down just put an "x" in every row then?  Since that is the one value that it is finding?

That said, in testing, I realized that I had to make the field blank and then I selected the column and replaced values of blank (nothing) with a "null" and then it worked.

Step 1:

And THEN when I did the "fill down" it worked: