powerbi has so many features that it's really difficult to get a full overview of everything that's possible it happens quite a lot to me that I see somebody doing something in powerbi where I think huh didn't I know that was possible that is possible since the last two three years ah it would have saved me so much time so I thought it's time to make a video with my top 10 PS of features that can make a huge difference so let's dive in let's get started with feature number one which is a search box that you can add to a slicer I use it in almost any report when I have slicers that have a long list of items I don't want to us this to keep on scrolling scrolling and looking for the item that they need no instead add a search box now to do it it's really simple let's go over here to a normal old slicer let's select it go here to more options click on search that's it that gives me search functionality that I can use to look for a certain employee so let's say we are looking for Samantha I type in Sam here we have two cementers cement atams and reads now let's go for read and Tada that's it now you can also toggle it off and on with the shortcut keys contrl F so you see now it's off and now it's on now does this also work when the slicer is formatted as a drop down or with a new slicer yeah also works in exactly the same way let me show you so here I have a drop down slicer I go to the three dots and here we have search and the same for the new slicer which is over here go go to the three dots click on search taada we get a search box there at the top of the slicer now for the next one let's stay on the topic of filtering did you know that you can use Wild Card characters when searching for something whether that is in a slicer or in the fil of pain let me show you let's say we are looking for an empe where we know that this 's first name is Emily so we can just dive in M you see we have a few mes popping up and we forgot what the last name was exactly but we do know that in the last name we have something with a B right so what we could do is that we just type in m and then an aster sign which means well M followed by whatever and then we need to have a b and you see that gives me Emily Baker or Emily brinch so if I would just type in em and then B well that would not give me any search results but using the Wild Card character and Aster X that allows me to be a little bit more flexible in my searches now that same functionality you can also use in the filter pane over here just make sure that you switch to Advanced filtering and then contains and then when I get rid of what we just filled out in the slicer I could go here to contains just fill it out over here exactly same thing apply the filter you see the only two options have remain are Emily Baker and Emily brinch all right now let's go from filtering features to sorting features now the next one that I'm going to show you is helpful when you're working with Matrix visuals or table visuals now here we have a big table with a lot of information and to get to the insights that I need while sorting plays a crucial role now how can we do that on a table or Matrix visual well we can just go to the Hat cck three dots then sort by and choose the field that you want to sort by and if you want to have that in sending or descending order or you can also just click on a column header so you see when I click on certain column header we are sorting the table by that field that you clicked on and whether it's an ascending or descending order you see by that little error now but what if I want to sort let's say by month well then I can click here on month and you see well now first we have January and then we have February and then we have March Etc but the year column well it's not sorted so what I want to do first is sort by the year and then by the month and to achieve that we can hold the shift key so first without holding the shift key I click your on year now the year is sort in ascending order then I want to also sort by the month so I hold the shift key click on month and now we have a double sort so first by the year then by the month the order in which we clicked on the column adds now why is it starting with August because because that is where my data starts otherwise it would have been January but if I scroll further down then you will see after August we have September and then October and November Etc so you see holding the shift key allows you to do a double sort on a matrix or table visual now let's stay on the topic of sorting for the next Feature Feature number four now this one allows you to apply a sorting order by a field that is not used in the visual now let me show you what I mean and why you would want to use it now over here we have a bar chart and to figure out where do we have the highest revenue for what country well it's kind of tricky when it's not sorted so let's go here to the three dots and then say sort access by total revenue this already makes it much easier but maybe I actually want to have the Sorting order by the revenue of sunflower seeds raw material now how can we achieve that well I cannot just go here to three dots sort access because well total revenue of sunflower seeds is not there so I cannot sort by that field so what you need to do is create a measure total revenue sunflower seeds and add that to the tool tip and then you can sort by that measure now let's do this so here I have the measure total revenue sunflower seeds I take it and I add it to the visual but on the tool TP section and now that I have total revenue sunflower seeds on tool tips I can go to the three dots sort access you see Tada there it is total revenue sunflower seeds and if you're thinking well that messes up my tool tip well might be if you don't want to show that information what you can do is just use Custom Tool tips all right now not all of the visuals though have a tool tip section if we have let's say a normal table or Matrix well then if I take total revenue sunflower seeds and want to add it to the tool tip section well there's no tool tip section so here we just need to add a two columns yes it is visible but then I can make that column invisible which you can do just by well making that column less wide now when you do that you see text wrap is turned on and you have to turn it off so that it doesn't get divided over multiple lines now you can do that under the formatting then here values and then here turn text wrap off and the same thing you can do for the column headers there we also have text wrap that you have to turn off then you can make the column appear by setting the width to zero pixels so now you see we can sort by total revenue sunflower seeds short Interruption if you got value from this video so far then make sure to hit that subscribe button that's the best way to support this channel where I have hundreds of free powerbi videos for you to watch now if you like learning with me in a more structured way then check out my trainings over here now thank you and let's go back to the video and the next feature has to to do with navigating through your report now in many reports you probably have a lot of pages especially if you're working with Custom Tool tips well then the number of pages can explode very quickly now instead of using these arrows here in the bottom left corner to go to the right and to the left what you can also do just right click on the arrows and that gives you a nice little popup menu from where we can just choose the page that we want to navigate to all right so that was a short one feature number five let's now go to feature number six which is using shortcuts when you are writing Dex formulas there are a lot of useful Dex shortcuts that make your life so much easier if you want to have the full list check them out over here but the two that I really use all the time are first of all a multi select of a certain instance so for example I want to replace average selling price with total revenue then I just select it once hold control shift L and that selects all of the instances and then I can simply replace that with total revenue so total revenue there you go that's it so I don't have to do it three times another one that I use a lot is control forward slash to comment something out or to uncomment something so I can just select the part that I want to comment out now before this I'm going to copy it contrl C then control bound symbol to comment it out then I'm going to paste it in with contrl + V and instead of ma X I want to have let's say the average value so I can say average and then over here we have average X and of course here then we also have average now this can save you a lot of time for example when you're debugging or you want to try different variations or you just don't want to delete that code that you had previously so therefore you just leave it in as a comment well exactly like this if you want to bring it back just select it again control bound symbol or control forward slash depending on your keyboard language settings uh brings it back all right perfect now let's go to the next feature now for this one we stay on the topic of measures so feature number seven is how can we nicely organize our measures now that we can do by using measure tables and folders now a measure table is actually really easy to create you just have to create an empty table which you can do here in the home enter data and here you can give it a nice name you cannot call it measures you can call it for example underscore and then measures that is okay or something like metrix or kpis and once you have done that I would usually go to the modeling View and there you see we have a measure stable now I already set up a matrix table before so what I can do is I can select those measures that I want to move to my new measure table so let's say these ones over here with all of the different targets and then I can just drag and drop them into my new table and once you have done that you can delete the only one column column number one from the model and that's it now it is a measure table and you see the icon also changing okay now it will always pop up there at the top because well it also starts there with underscore and right below it we have a folder a folder that contains the measures now how did I get that folder there it's actually really easy you just have to select the measure that you want to put in the folder and then go here to properties and there you find display folder targets now you can also work with subfolders now let's say want to put the current year Target measures in a separate subfolder then I select those three measures that I find over here then go to display folder and then I can use a backslash backlash and then C here and that creates a subfolder now there's another one that could be helpful which is semicolon if you would do semicolon and then for example marketing then you see we have the same measures there in the marketing folder which could be helpful if you have same measures being used by maybe different departments or different teams and you organize your measures in that way so that they are easily findable by the developers of that team or the users of that team so that was feature number seven for the next ones we go to Power quy now a feature that I was ignoring for the longest time is to create a column from example that can save you a lot of time figuring out a complex formula to create a certain custom column now let me show you when you can find it and why it's so helpful so you can go here to add column column from examples and then either from all the columns or from a selected column now let me give you an example let's say that here for the email column I want to extract the first name okay then I can go here to add column column from example now here we have the selection which is the email column and then I can name this one first name and give some examples right so I can just type in Jeffrey and Tada it already figures out what I'm trying to do on the basis of that first example Jeffrey now what if I would have typed Jeffrey with a capital J Jeffrey you see it would also capitalize all of the other ones now let's make it a little bit more tricky because this one we could also have easily done with just transform extract now let's say we want to have the first name so Jeffrey and Then followed by the first letter of the last name okay now not so easy anymore if I give it one example it doesn't know what to do okay another example Andrew R and well it kind of does but not always you see it is already trying to figure out the formula for what we are trying to do but it's not completely correct so we have to keep on going so I give it some more examples so Michael and then e and now I believe it figured it out so after three examples it figured it out and you see the formula there at the top now that is a pretty long one and not so easy to figure out on your own so let's say that we are happy with this so let's click here on okay and to see that formula you can either go to the formula bar if you have it enabled here under View and then formula bar or you can click on Advanced editor pops up over here the editor window where we find the code for that custom column okay alternatively you can also just click here on that little gear icon right now next to it and that gives us the code and now you might be looking at it it looks maybe a little bit complex if you're not so familiar with the m code and you're trying to figure out what these functions do and what the arguments are and how to work with them maybe on an easier example now for that what you can do is just take the name of the function for example here splitter. spit text by delimiter that's the function name copy it all right then I add a new Step by clicking there on the FX button and then paste in over here the function name press enter now over here we can first of all play around with the function you see the different arguments of the function and usually there's a small example now here it's very small usually it's a bit longer than this one and this can be super helpful to figure out what is actually created there by the column from example feature and in this way you also build a better understanding of the M language now and that brings me to the next video feature I believe feature number nine lost count all right now the next feature is that if you want to get an overview of all of the functions in the M language what you do is you can create here a new blank query then type in equal sign hasht shared and then I would turn these records into table by using here record tools convert into table and now we can search for the functions that are relevant to what we are trying to do for example splitting right so I type in split and you see over here we have different split functions or I can just do a contains and then say contains split now it's case sensitive just watch out and here we have all of the split functions and if I'm interested in a particular one for example here split text by delimiter then we can click on that function and now we are back to our description of this function now and also here we can play around Perfect all right time for the last one number 10 now what I didn't know for the longest time is that you can copy a query from one powerbi workbook to another or to even Excel power query now let me show you let's say I want to copy that employee query from before then I can go to my table which is Now function so I should delete the last step all right now I want to copy it now what I would have done before in the past was that I would go to view Advanced editor and then here copy the code and then bring it over over to well the query editor in my new powerbi file but instead of that you can just right click on the query copy it then go to that new powerbi file or that file where you need it right click in the query span and simply paste it there and you see it brings over them employees but also that parameter Source folder as well because it's being used by that crey pretty awesome all right so these were my top 10 feature pcks in powerbi that are easily overlooked but can make a huge difference now I know that there are many more so let me know which ones you would add in the comment section below and if you want to build reports together with me from beginning to end learn all of my tips and tricks then check out my upcoming design transformation program over here thank you for watching and if you want to watch more powerbi videos then check out these two videos over here thank you and see you in the next video