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PeterHarket
Frequent Visitor

PowerBI changes my dataverse column names

Hi!

 

When I connect to my dataverse database, all the right column names are displayed in Power Query (Transform data tab). However, when I close and apply, the fields in my tables on the right hand side get completely different names. 

 

How I do I make it so that PowerBI does not change the names?

6 REPLIES 6
Syndicate_Admin
Administrator
Administrator

This feature actually created a huge issue for me that almost caused me to lose a massive and critical Power BI file. Backups would have restored it, but I would have lost a few hours of work. Details here:

Basically, this renaming feature interfered with my primary key in a table. I renamed the column name then something happened with this feature (IDK if it was suddenly rolled out to our environment or what, but it wasn't an issue and then it was) and the key column was automatically renamed to the Dataverse name. My old relationship still existed, but it pointed to a column that didn't exist so Power BI was acting weird. I went into the Power Query Editor, made a copy of my primary key column but renamed it to the default dataverse name, reloaded and made a new relationship. It worked, but Power BI was acting buggy. So I saved the file and reopen -- two relationships exist between two tables; auto-close.

 

At runtime, it LOOKED like there was one column with one relationship, but it was two columns with the same name (or same display name at least) each with their own relationship to the same table.

 

It's easy to reproduce:

 

let
    Source = CommonDataService.Database("ENVRIONMENT.crm.dynamics.com"),
    dbo_connection = Source{[Schema="dbo",Item="contact"]}[Data],
    #"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(dbo_connection,{"contactid", "fullname"})
in
    #"Removed Other Columns"

 

Power Query Editor does not match the loaded and displayed Field Names. This is a huge issue.

 

Suppose I'm editing the visuals, and delete or rename "Full Name" to "Employee Name"... that inserts a transform step in Power Query, and that breaks because "Full Name" isn't a valid column name. Now I can't refresh the dataset.

 

Or it would also be easy to do what I did to break the file entirely:

 

1) Make a relationship to another table with the Contact field.

2) Open Power Query Editor, duplicate the contactid column and rename it to Contact.

3) Make another relationship to the other table.

4) Save the file and be unable to open it.

Syndicate_Admin
Administrator
Administrator

This is exactly the problem that I've wasted the last few hours trying to diagnose. Did this change recently? Is there any way to turn this off?

 

It lead to an awful bug where I had two columns with the same name, and both of them were being used in a relationship and it hosed my file.

ugurdemir
Advocate I
Advocate I

It was not as it is a month ago. Renaming was working fine. I see that they've changed something in PowerBI to get the Display Names of Dataverse table columns. It's OK for me cause Display names are all fine in my tables. 

Robellsworth
New Member

This is a problem I recently had. It seems to be a change in the way power bi assigns column names. I am renaming the column in power query and then in power bi the column name is sonething else.

 

eg I have a column "abc_name" in broker table. I rename it to "Broker Name" in power query. In power bi it shows as "Name". Even if I don't rename it is shows as "Name".

 

This has just started to happen recently.

v-eqin-msft
Community Support
Community Support

Hi @PeterHarket ,

 

It's weird. To my knowledge, this action will apply all changes to Power BI Desktop.

Are there any operations to rename the columns?Please provide some screenshots to help us clarify your scenario.

Eyelyn9_0-1659319907185.png

 

Best Regards,
Eyelyn Qin
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

I experience the same thing.  Never happened in the past with Dataverse.  What appears to happen is that for some fields, a friendly name (no doubt coming from Dataverse) is automatically applied.  You don't see this in PQ but when looking in Desktop the friendly name appears.

That is fine, but the issue I see is that if, in PQ, I rename the field.  In Desktop, the automatic friendly name is used instead - so my PQ is ignored.  I can still override the auto name in Desktop, but it is annoying.

For example, in PQ I rename the field: 

HitachiOG_0-1682096098274.png

but in Desktop I see the auto generated name of Account

HitachiOG_1-1682096141350.png

 

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