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Anonymous
Not applicable

SharePoint Lists - how to get Display names

When you load data from a SharePoint list, the columns are named using an "Internal" name rather than the "Display" name that exposed when interacting with SharePoint. 

 

Is there a recipe that can be used to retrieve the display names and overwrite the internal names once imported into Power BI?

8 REPLIES 8
Anonymous
Not applicable

@Anonymous,

 

Is the column of your SharePoint list a person/group column?

 

If so, you should find a expandable field column that you can expand in the Query Editor to get a hold of employee display names along with other information:

 

SharepointName.PNG

Anonymous
Not applicable

Yes, I know that this needs to be done in PowerQuery and I know that the display names must be available, but they are deeply nested in sub-tables that are not intuitively named - I've spent quite a bit of time looking.  Try it, you'll see what I mean.

 

I'm asking if anyone has a recipe for retrieving them - have you figured out the path through the nested tables to find the display names?

Anonymous
Not applicable

@Anonymous,

 

I understand, however it would help if you could tell us what your SharePoint list looks like and what column types are in it?

I dont' really know if you can directly retrieve a person's display name fromn a sub-table unless the SharePoint list column itself is a person/group column to begin with - in this case it is quite staright-forward as the sub-table is named similarly as the SharePoint list column.

 

Br,

T

Anonymous
Not applicable

I'm not talking about a person's display name.  I'm taking about the display name of a column in a list. 

 

When I retrieve the columns from a list, the names of the columns often do not match the column names displayed in SharePoint.  For example:

 

"Primary Geography Country" is brought in as "Primary Geography Co"

"Launch: Overall Readiness" is brought in as "Launch: Overall_x002"

"Complete" gets brought is as "AllDone" (because I had originally called the column AllDone and then changed it)

"Introduction" gets brought in as "Title" (because I changed Title to Introduction)

 

I'm looking for a recipe to drill into the nested tables in what is returned for the list to get the display names.  My hope is that these are stored consistently in the data structures, regardless of the type of data each column holds.

 

Dale

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

@Anonymous

I see, sorry for misunderstanding...

 

Anonymous
Not applicable

Mine are just there so I’d work with the share point owner to ad them to the list. You may need to get the lookup table of ID to Display name.
Seward12533
Solution Sage
Solution Sage

Best to handle in in PowerQuery when your importing the data.  Its probably in an embeeded list or table that you need to expand or extract (there is a little icon on the top right of the column that looks like two upwards arrow pointing out. (see below)

 

If you still can't find it you will need to build and link a lookuptable - you can get a headstart by using CREATE TABLE on the Modeling menu and using List of IDs TEMP = VALUES(table[IDs])  to generate a unique list of values which you can copy and past into a new table with ENTER DATA from the Home tab and then add the mapping columns.

 

capture20180807182728998.png

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