Power BI Table Visual | Create a Table in Power BI

As a Power BI developer, you should know how to work with the Power BI table visual in reports and dashboards. In this tutorial, I will explain how to use the Power BI table visual in reports. Next, I will explain how to create a table in Power BI using various methods, providing examples.

I will show you four methods to create a new table in Power BI Desktop.

1. using Table visual
2. using the Enter Data option
3. using DAX table constructor
4. from another table using DAX

Power BI Table

The Power BI Table visual is a core visualization that displays data in a tabular format, similar to a spreadsheet. It allows you to present raw data or summary statistics in rows and columns, making it easy to review detailed information, compare values, and perform data analysis.

Key features of the Power BI Table visual include:

• Customizable columns: You can add, remove, and reorder columns based on your data needs.
• Sorting and filtering: Users can sort data by any column and apply filters directly within the visual.
• Conditional formatting: Apply color coding, data bars, or icons to highlight important values or trends.
• Column resizing: Adjust the width of columns to fit your data and improve readability.
• Drill-through and tooltips: Enhance interactivity by enabling users to drill down into details or view additional information via tooltips.

Tables are particularly useful when you need to display detailed data, such as transaction lists, inventory reports, or any dataset where row-level analysis is important. You can further enhance them with formatting options to make the data easier to interpret and visually appealing.

Check out How to Format Table Visual in Power BI?

Create a Table in Power BI using the Table Visual

You can use the Table visual presented in the Visualization section to create a new table in Power BI.

Below, you can view an image of a table showing the many values for a single Product.

Let’s see the steps to create a table in Power BI Desktop.

1. Launch the Power BI Desktop app. Connect the data source to the report page.
2. Once loaded, the data will appear under the Data pane.
   • You can click on the options displayed on the report page or click on Get data from another source.

3. Go to the Visualizations pane, click on the Table visual. Then, the empty table will be added without any values.
4. Next, drag and drop the field values from the data pane to the Columns section.

Then, you will see the table with the configured column values on the Power BI report page.

Note:

You can also rearrange the data fields in the columns section, drag and drop within the order of columns.

This is one way to create a new table on the Power BI report page.

Learn Slicers in Power BI Report

Create a Table in Power BI using the Enter Data Option

I will explain how to create a table with values manually using the Enter Data option in Power BI.

By using this option, you can enter the data directly and use it in your Power BI reports and visualizations.

1. On Power BI Desktop, go to the Home tab > Enter Data.

2. Then, it opens another window to create a new table. Add the column by clicking on the + symbol. Click inside the column and rename it, and provide values to display.
3. Select the Load button to import the data.

When the changes are applied, the Power BI desktop creates a new table from the data we provided. The image shows the Table and its fields.

Check Power BI Ribbon Chart

Power BI: Create a New Table using DAX Constructor

This is one of the methods in Power BI, where you can create a table directly using the DAX table constructor.

In the DAX expression editor, use curly brackets to define the table values.

{(value1),(value2),(value3)}

Follow the steps:

1. On the Power BI Desktop, click on Modeling and select New Table. It will create a new table. Provide the expression as shown in the code below.

Countries = {"USA","UK","Australia","France","Brazil"}

2. This will create a table with a single column containing the values [USA, UK, Australia, France, Brazil].

You can also create a multi-column table by using parentheses () around each row, separated by a comma. The syntax will be like:

{
  (A, B, C),
  (1, 2, 3),
  (*, %, &)
}

3. The code below shows the expression for multiple columns in a table that represents Product, Sales quantity, and Price of product.

Product Table = {("Laptop",45,CURRENCY(100)),("Charger",56,CURRENCY(56.8)),("IPAD",92,CURRENCY(92.5))}

Output:

See Power BI DAX Logical functions

Create a Table in Power BI from Another Table using DAX

Let’s see how to create a new table with partial columns from another table using DAX in Power BI Desktop.

I have an existing table named ‘Products Sales Table‘ with columns such as Products, Country, Region, and Sales Quantity. You can refer to the table in the image below.

Now, I wanted to create a new table with only the columns Products and Sales Quantity, where the values will be retrieved from the table shown above.

See the Quick Steps below:

1. On the Power BI report page, click on the Modeling tab. Select the New table icon.
2. Enter the expression below in the formula bar and click on the checkmark icon.

Products & Sales Quantity = SUMMARIZE('Products Sales Table','Products Sales Table'[Product],'Products Sales Table'[sales Quantity])

In the expression, you can replace the values with your table values.

3. Then, you can view the newly created data table under the Data pane. When you select the table and click the Table view icon to view the created table.

This is how to create a table from an existing table in Power BI Desktop.

In this tutorial, you have learnt four different ways to create a table in Power BI Desktop.

Among all the methods explained, using the enter data option is easier to create a table, but the option to edit the data is present in the Power Query editor. I would suggest using the Table visual, which offers many ways to format the table.

You can also suggest other ways to create a table in Power BI in the comments section below.

See Other Power BI Tutorials:

• Power BI Q&A Visualization
• Power BI Donut Chart
• Microsoft Power BI Combo Chart
• Power BI Combine Columns From Two Tables

Bijay Kumar

After working for more than 18 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (12 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.