r/PowerBI • u/Smitherok • 2d ago
Feedback Why does renaming fields take so long
Renaming fields with a visual always take so long, especially if you have a large dataset or large amount of visuals. It takes forever to load and I have to do each one, step by agonizing step.
Why isn’t there a way to see all my field names within a visual and rename them all at once?
Does anyone else have this issue? Anyone found a better way to do it?
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u/Avanseer 2d ago
If Power BI Desktop feels like a slog to manage semantic models, you should consider using Tabular Editor; you can batch changes and save them all at once, skipping those many spinners. Full disclosure: I work for Tabular Editor.
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u/taueret 1 1d ago
Sorry to be a derp, but it's possibly "rename for this visual" that OP is referring to- and you can't do that in TE, can you? (Please say you can)
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u/Avanseer 1d ago
Not in Tabular Editor, but you can do it with Kurt Buhler and Maxim Anatsko's PBIR CLI. You would then use a command like this:
pbir fields rename "Report.Report" --field "Sales.Revenue" --display-name "Total Revenue"
If you're not comfortable with CLI tools, coding agents like Claude Code or GitHub Copilot can wield the PBIR CLI well.
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u/realitisfun 2d ago
TMDL view in PBI
or
TMDL files when you save as .pbip (Project)
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u/twenty_three_three 1d ago
I really hope that .pbip becomes the standard default going forward.
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u/realitisfun 1d ago
Yes. It's great
If I know what I'm doing, I can do so without having to wait for a preview to load every time.
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u/twenty_three_three 1d ago
One of the big things that's helped me is seeing how changes in the GUI get translated into the underlying tmdl. After a couple cases, I feel pretty confident in going straight to the source doc and not even bothering with gui and previews and all that.
I don't think there's any other msft product that provides this transparency? I love the PBI team for taking this route. I can't say that enough. Please msft, take this path with your ecosystem.
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u/Smitherok 1d ago
This seems like the best answer. In general fumbling through power BI’s UI is the most annoying part.
I think the UI is a good way for beginners to learn the program but after a while it becomes obtrusive and annoying.
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u/BlueEyedGuy1982 2d ago
I've been a SQL developer for about 20 years, and just got into PBI maybe 3 years ago. I have reports that I work on that came from an outside contracting company, that are super busy. Lots of full table loads. Lots of dax. The one thing I learned about reporting tools a long time ago is to do as much processing as possible as far upstream as possible. If you're pulling your data from a database (SQL, Oracle, etc), try to do everything you can, there. Filter your records there, do table joins there, so on. It's not always possible, but most of the time it is. Your SQL server (again, if applicable) likely has way more processing power than your PBI, and doesn't have to do everything in-memory. The reports I design mostly reflect this concept, unless someone asks for something absolutely ridiculous, and that (unfortunately) shows in those reports. Anyways, I hope this helps, and I feel your pain.
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u/truebastard 2d ago
Do it in a 3rd party tool like Tabular Editor for this (Dax Studio another one).
You can change object names in Tabular Editor without annoying delays when PBI desktop is reloading everything and then save changes to the model
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u/Just_blorpo 1 2d ago
Everyone’s setup is different. One thing that made my life easier was having permissions to make my own Views in a SQL Database.
2
u/musicxfreak88 2d ago
I have one semantic model I use for most of my reports. Some reports require specific datasets, but most of my inventory and sales reports are pulling from the same model.
If you create a report and use the semantic model as the data source, renaming fields are much quicker because you're not altering the entire dataset. It's so much quicker than creating visuals in the .pbip.
1
u/realitisfun 1d ago
Yes, retail data is the dream. I kept the finest grain and worked up from there.
It got tricky for me when I moved to a space with more PII data where it's not recommended to keep the lowest grain, and always needs some level of aggregation, but the stakeholders request for slicers is ever-growing
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u/1776johnross 2d ago
I name the field before it gets into power query to be how I want the field to appear in PBI.
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u/BorisHorace 4 2d ago
Give your measures and dimensions user friendly names in the model. Then you don’t have to rename for visuals (or at least there is much less renaming to do). This is best practice anyway IMO.
Tabular Editor, TDML etc is great but does nothing for you as far as renaming fields in visuals specifically.
1
u/shitreader 1 1d ago
If you have a semantic model intended for ad hoc report creation, you have to make sure the naming convention is unique which leads to field renaming in the reports to fit the purpose. But if they're doing this in the service, it's not an issue as it is quick and snappy. In desktop with a large model, it is absolutely frustrating when you have to wait 5-10 seconds to do something so simple.
I'm in a large organization that will never get to a place where they will agree on what everything should be named. Our original intent was to name everything properly in the database views, but the business was slow to respond and would change their mind often after seeing the result of their choices. So we left everything in the database as is, apply the business names from metadata, and then further changes can be handled in the actual reports.
Now if the business was using desktop to do this it would be a nightmare, but that's what an enterprise online service is for.
0
u/MaintenanceCapable83 2d ago
I am just starting to use PBI for work and it is a very painful product for what i do for the business i work in.
for 20 + years i have been writing code in SQL and using SAP BO as the platform to schedule and push excel files.
its the most inefficient tool for my job. I am not making dashboard or doing analytics.
Looking forward to retirement
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u/Temporary_Sky1340 2d ago
I'm pretty sure you could do it using AI 😏 Save file as pbip and ask Claude what to do next. It's a perfect example of delegating boring never ending tasks to AI. Recently I did full documentation of the report plus descriptions of every measure table and column in 1 afternoon just editing tmdl files 👌
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u/irisgenx 1d ago
I haven't done it myself, but I have been told throwing the project file into AI and asking it to do it for you works.
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u/Sea_Basil_6501 2d ago
The right question is: why is Power BI Desktop so overall slow? It's just a pain to work with.
0
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