unexpected matrix sort

[Anonymous]

I'm getting this error in data view when attempting to sort 'Metric desc' by 'Order' with the goal of displaying the 'Metric Desc' data in the requisite order without displaying the 'Order' column itself. This error would be expected if the values in 'Metric Desc' were not unique which is not the case. The source is Excel. I have tried the following remedies with no success:

• Changing the sort value to text ("01", "02", "03"..."12")
• Removing the "•" character from the 'Metric Desc' values
• Deleting the query and starting over
• Recreating the data in a new Excel tab

The data set:

Order	Metric Desc	Measure
1	Transition metrics to date (Domestic)	117/124
2	• Current number of phones ported	19
3	• Current number of phones disconnected	98
4	Domestic users that still need to transition	7
5	• TJC	7
6	• JCR	0
7	• CTH	0
8	Transition metrics to date (International)	6/82​
9	• Current number of phones ported	1
10	• Current number of phones disconnected	5
11	Decisions pending for international JCIA users	76
12	International user stipend requests	6

The session info:

Release:
February 2018

Product Version:
2.55.5010.641 (PBIDesktop) (x64)

OS Version:
Microsoft Windows NT 10.0.14393.0 (x64 en-US)

CLR Version:
4.6.2 or later [Release Number = 394802]

[v-qiuyu-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

In your data, the same Metric Desc can have two Order values. If you set the column Metric Desc to be sorted by the Order column, for example the value " • Current number of phones ported" has two orders 2 and 9, it can't be determined whether the value "• Current number of phones ported" should be sorted based on 2 or 9. So it's expected that you get that error message. 

You can modify your data, then you can set the column Metric Desc to be sorted by the Order column. See: 

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for pointing that out. Turns out that I failed to notice there were repeating values in the Metric Desc column.