Just a little donut chart / bar chart combo for this month's #StorytellingWithData challenge. This month it was to highlight missing data meaningfully.

We Have AI Now www.youtube.com/shorts/8-lgJ...

So I did the #PowerBI World Championships thing. Not my best work (strapped for time; tried to keep it to 12pt min, taking up space; the data didn't lead me towards the nicest visuals; etc.) but those things are part of the challenge. You can see it at community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Contests-...

In an ongoing war against misinformation; AI hallucinations; the ranking of information being determined by advertising revenue; SEO slop; and the general enshitification of the web in general and search in particular, #Wikipedia is leading the charge. It's well worth celebrating this milestone.

Managed to define a sticking point I come across quite often: People want precision in the answers without being prepared to provide precision in their questions.

Anyone care to fess up to using any of the 3D pyramid / cylindrical / conical charts from #Excel 2007?

Popped back into #Excel 2007's chart menu over the weekend. Did anyone use any of the crazier visuals here back in the day? 3D conical stacks anyone? Can't even get them in the #PowerBI store these days. #DataVizFashion

Here's my #MakeoverMonday entry for this week, about the world's tallest rollercoasters. This was all done in #Excel

Here's my #MakeoverMonday entry for this week, about the world's tallest rollercoasters. This was all done in #Excel

Not only will the #PowerBI service turn off the scheduled refresh of the data behind a report (just 'cos no-one is looking at it) without warning you first, but when you try to turn it back on again (cos' it's refreshing is part of a #PowerAutomate Flow) it makes it look like it's on when it isn't.

Naturally the New Year messed up the dates in the source in unexpected ways. Still drawing a difficult away match sees us keeping ahead of the lines. #LUFC

Inspired by our current form I built a tracker for whether Leeds are staying up or not using #Excel, #PowerQuery & ESPN's data. No need to add scores in, it will update after every match. We are currently ahead of schedule. #LUFC #MOT #DataViz.

It's interesting that Amazon retail is only really using AI to summarise reviews, which is not something that appeals to me, whereas what I want it to do is let me give it all my specifications for a said item & show me the ones that fit. I should be able to do this with filters, but it rarely works

Listening to #TheAshes while finishing off my first #MakeoverMonday. This week it's the relationship between crime and deprivation in London. Done with #PowerBI.

Another #Copilot / MS self-own. #ThatsWhereIExpectedToFindItToo

I just had to do this again for my monthly reports, so I was glad I posted this. Otherwise I would have totally forgotten how to do it.

Possible easy improvement for #PowerBI... Please could we have an Alt+F12 shortcut to open #PowerQuery like we do in Excel? Now the Alt shortcuts have gone again this would be a nice way to get this back and easily aligned with other MS products. Tagging the ever-patient @itsnotaboutthecell.com

Trying to restore #PowerBI new cards to how they were b4? This worked for me: CARDS>Divider [on] CARDS>Padding [0px] CALLOUT>Layout>Callout size [60%] REFERENCE LABELS>Title>Font [12px] REFERENCE LABELS>Value>Font [12px] SIZE AND STYLE>Height [down] SIZE AND STYLE>Vertical [up] CARDS>Divider [off]

Taking a short break from going through @sqlgene.com 's "Identifying and Solving Performance Issues in Power BI" course. It's great so far.

On LinkedIn @wynhopkins.bsky.social mentioned the absence of a button/shortcut for CENTRE ACROSS SELECTION in #Excel. So here's the #AHK v2 code to do it: #HotIf WinActive("ahk_exe EXCEL.EXE") +#c:: { xl := ComObjActive("Excel.Application") sel := xl.Selection sel.HorizontalAlignment := 7 } #HotIf

I'm amused by how often #copilot agrees with me about basic functionality that's absent in #PowerBI. For example Me: "How can I change the font size for a data label on a Reference Line? CP: "Reference Lines>Data label>Font size" Me: "Yeah, that's where I expected to find it too..."

Two other things on the new #PowerBI Nov. update 1. We seem to have lost the Alt shortcuts. Why? These were really useful. 2. The old card visual is now not shown in the default visuals menu. To get it back click on the 3 dots in Build & choose "Restore default visuals".

One thing to look out for in the latest #PowerBI update ( 2.149.911.0 Nov.2025) is that they have tweaked the Multi-card layout so that the icons on a lot of my card visuals went from nice ticks above to whatever that is below. To fix you have to go to Callout/Image/Image fit and choose centre.

I gave #'PowerBI 's #VisualCalculations (yet) another go & finally got a result & on quite a useful scenario as well: when you just want to show the max &/or min values on a line chart. Took some figuring out (you've to add the original measure twice & not sure why it worked) but some progress.

Does anyone who codes with M in #PowerQuery have a recommended #VSCode extension they use with it?

Has anyone come across/solved this issue? I'm trying to paste a table copied from Power BI Table View (aka Data View) into Excel. It has worked many times a day for months and months, but suddenly I'm getting this error. "This file cannot be opened because of errors. Errors are listed in: ...log."

Is there a more annoying #Excel error message than this one? "Yes I'm writing a 4-term LET() formula, I know what the equals sign at the start means"

New #Excel formula for me: TAKE() Allows you to choose a specific entry from an array. For example =TAKE({1,2,3,4},,-1) gives you 4 Syntax is: TAKE(Array,row,column) where -1 is the last

I'd be happier with Microsoft's ploughing so much into Co-pilot if at least some of that resource could go into making its error messages intelligible.

I made these cute little SVG/DAX powered gauges for #PowerBI in the early part of this afternoon.

It would be great to be able to change the width of columns in Table View/Data View in #PowerBI by right clicking & inputting a value (like you can in Excel). I have one that always auto-sets & its over a screen wide. Takes several drags to get it to a useable size. Any hope @itsnotaboutthecell.com

1001 Films to See Before You Experience a Minor Illness

A reminder that even MS call it COpilot, not Pilot.

Trying to work out diagnose query tools in #PowerBI including using @cwebbbi.bsky.social's blog posts. Mainly I want to know is which step takes the longest, so I can optimise it, but if I sum up the "Exclusive duration" fields for each step, the last takes the longest & the 1st is shortest ...1/2

How has it taken me this long to discover Table.FilterWithDataTable() in #PowerQuery's M code? Does anyone know how this compares speed-wise with merging on an inner join or using List.PositionOf() and then filtering?

Really useful selection of resources on #PowerBI themes

I figured out how to make a 'card' like this in #POwerBI using a HTML Content Lite visual powered by a measure like: SideCard = "<span style='font-size: 18pt; color:#BfBfBf;'>Do we need this option? </span> <span style='font-size: 40pt; color:#1f8201; font-weight: bold; '>" & [Measure] & "</span>"

If in #PowerBI you can't get the intersection to match the total row colour try this measure in 'Cell Elements': IntersectionColour = IF( NOT ISINSCOPE('Table'[RowField]) && NOT ISINSCOPE('Table'[ColumnField]), "#FFD700", //(rgb color) BLANK() ) [Remember to choose 'Totals only']

New #Excel shortcut for today: Ctr + . Moves the active cell in a range of selected cells to the next corner (clockwise)

#WaitWhat? when you dedupe in #PowerQuery, it doesn't do it in order? Why am, I just finding this out now? This has potentially cost me :(

New blog post. How to solve it in #Excel when those pesky yellow triangles pop up telling you your imports matches no exports #PowerQuery charitydatageek.blogspot.com/2025/07/exce...

In terms of the July #PowerBI update I think it's the one around pies/donuts that most interests me initially, though I do really need to put field parameters through their paces. powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/p...

Can you add a non-constant average line to a line chart in PowerBI? Everyone said no (at least not without superimposing), but eventually I figured out a work-around.

Nice to pass my #PowerBl Data Analyst Associate reassessment again. Of the 4 I got wrong a couple contained terms I don't recall hearing even with going through all the MS Learn material (which I think is the point in some areas – I also got DAX questions right that aren't in the materials)

I asked Co-pilot to rephrase MS Learn's bit on using parameters in visual calculations in a way that was suitable for someone with ADHD and this is how it started out

It's a baking hot day in the middle of a heat wave with the wife away and the kids all grown up, so naturally I'm sat inside on my work computer cramming so I can renew my #PowerBI certification.

Using #SVGs to give a hand shaded/sketched feel to bar charts in PowerPoint by generating flexible fill code in #Excel using #DynamicArrays and RANDBETWEEN(). Pretty pleased with this. Learnt a lot getting to this point.

I'm trying to create a new funnel chart for PowerBI this time using SVG. I have the complicated Maths bit to do next. Not sure whether I'm looking forward to that or not.

If you see this, quote post with a robot that isn’t from Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr Who and Transformers

If you find #PowerBI's grid lacking then here's a simple way I came up with to build your own, easily adjustable grid (including numbering) using DAX & SVGs (& I only started using SVGs this week). Make it even easier with #AHK. charitydatageek.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-su...