Tip: How to Change Column Order in Data View

Power BI
1

Hi All.

I tripped over a small nugget while refactoring a data model and wanted to share. Have you every changed a data source in Power BI and had any new columns display at the end in Data View, rather than in the order you set in the Query Editor? Well, here’s a hack I came across that seems to work:

  • In Query Editor remove the incorrectly ordered column(s), then save changes.
    • You will see in Data View that column(s) was/were removed as well.
  • Now again in Query Editor remove from applied steps the action that removed the column(s), then save it again.
    • You will see in Data View that the previously removed column(s) was/were added to the end of the table.

Shout-out to trololo for posting this; see the 9th post in this thread:

Thanks,
Greg

3 Likes
2

Hi Greg,

I faced this issue too. and personally for fixing the columns sequence. I have created a blank table only with headers and every time when I am importing updated data set than appending to this table. and if any new column pop up than it will automatically show at last.

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That’s a clever work around. Would be great to see the idea mentioned in the post come to PBI desktop though.

4

Good information.

I have done this in excel by comparing headings from one download to another download.

thanks for sharing :slight_smile:

5

Hi @Greg, Thank you for always providing this group with great solutions. We greatly appreciate your efforts and your share of knowledge.