All about calculated columns in Power BI!

Since many years ago, adding columns to our database to add more logic has been a common practice. The majority of Excel users still use these formulas to add columns, and Power BI has incorporated this functionality as calculated columns.

Power Query and DAX functions can both be used to construct columns in Power BI. Although it is advised to utilize Power Query because of its optimization features, calculated columns are your buddy if you can’t.

Although you can do the same logic with a measure, calculated columns are the best choice if you want to use the result on the slicer, rows, and columns.

If we ignore the optimization part of creating calculated columns over measures, they are quite useful when you don’t have that particular column in your source, and that can be accomplished with calculated columns when the logic is changed in the source, which is always quite difficult to replicate and wait for, but the only drawback is that you cannot reuse that created column in another report you have to create it again.

Let's look at some examples to get some more clarity.

1. In the below video, we can see how we can create the sales column with the help of two other columns.

2. Let's create a weekday column in our calendar table.

Hence, now you have a gist of how calculated columns work in a real-life practical scenario. Now you can construct calculated columns in a table. These columns are computed and saved in the data model during the data loading procedure. Calculated columns can be used to add additional calculated values to your data, build custom hierarchies, construct relationships, and execute calculations based on already-existing columns.

#calculated columns #powerbi #microsoft #data

Reference: Supercharge Power BI