Shortcuts in Power BI – Data Bear

Hey all.  If you’re like me, you love using Power BI to create awesome data visualizations and reports. But sometimes, you might feel like it takes too long to do certain tasks or navigate the interface. That’s why I’m here to share with you some of my favourite shortcuts in Power BI that will save you time and make your life easier. Trust me, once you learn these, you’ll never go back to the old way of doing things.

Here are some of the shortcuts I use all the time:

Firstly I’d like to show you how to get a list of shortcuts on you screen, ironically it is also a shortcut.

Shortcut to shortcuts

If you press Shift + ? it will open a screen with a list.  On this list there is also a link that will take you straight to the Microsoft pages that has more short cuts.

Ctrl + N

This one is super simple, but super useful. It opens a new report in Power BI Desktop. No need to navigate to Power BI shortcut or clicking on file open.  Just use Ctrl + N and boom, new report.  Incidentally this works in all Microsoft applications for example Word and Excel.

Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V

These are the classic copy and paste commands that work in almost any application. But did you know that you can use them to copy and paste visuals, filters, slicers, and even entire pages in Power BI? Just select what you want to copy, press Ctrl + C, then go to where you want to paste it and press Ctrl + V. Easy peasy.  But don’t forget that Power BI still has the useful Copy and Paste buttons at the top of the screen.

F11

This one is for when you want to see how your report looks like in full screen mode. Note that this is on the Power BI service after you have published your report.  It toggles between the normal view and the full screen view of your report. This is useful for presenting your report or checking how it fits on different screen sizes.

Shortcuts in Power BI for DAX

Useful Keyboard shortcuts for DAX editor

• • Add lines: Shift + Enter

• • Insert cursor: Alt + Click

• • Move line up / down: Alt + Up arrow key/ Down arrow key

• • Copy line up / down: Shift + Alt + Up arrow key/ Down arrow key

• • Insert line below: Ctrl + Enter

• • Insert line above: Ctrl + Shift + Enter

Commenting out code

Commenting out code in DAX is a useful technique to temporarily disable parts of your formula or to add notes for yourself or others. To comment out code in DAX, you can use two dashes (–) followed by a space at the beginning of the line, or enclose the code in /* and */ symbols. For example:

— This is a single-line comment

/* This is a

multi-line comment */

You can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + / to comment out or uncomment the selected code in Power BI Desktop.

These are just some of the short cuts I use in Power BI, but there are many more. You can find a full list of them HERE:

I hope you found this blog post helpful and learned something new. Let me know in the comments what are your favorite shortcuts in Power BI or if you have any questions. Thanks for reading and happy data crunching!

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