First a quick personal update: We (Jo, kids & I) are in beautiful Virginia Beach. Yesterday, we had a perfect, lazy beach day. We woke up late, went to beach where kids played in sand. Got back to our house (rented thru airbnb) when it started raining, had lunch and took a nap. We got up and went to beach again, rode a family bike, watched several street performances, bought souvenirs, ate Thai food and drove home at 11. Long story short, we are having way too much fun and I feel like cheating on you by not posting anything Excel. So,
I have a poll for you.
What do you use Excel Tables for?
I will go first, I use them for,
- Maintaining all my raw data, so that I can use structural references
- Maintaining various trackers, for example I am tracking all our expenses in USA in a table.
- For quick formatting of data (zebra lining, filters, sorting etc.)
What about you? What kinds of data are you holding in tables and how are you using them. Please share using comments. Go.
Learn: Introduction to Tables, Introduction to structural references.
PS for our US readers: Have an enjoyable 4th of July & weekend. We are driving to Washington DC to celebrate the day with our friends and watch fireworks at National mall.

















2 Responses to “Top 10 Power BI Interview Questions & Answers”
Hello...
In Power BI I have data that includes months by name only (e.g. May, April, December...)
I need to build charts etc. but i need the months to go chronologically... not alphabetically... I cannot seem to find the fix to this.... once again, my data does NOT have an actual date attached to it (like 02/01/2023)....only month names... can i use a helper table wher i id the month names as numbers 1 thru 12? and if so, how do i manage this to work for me ?
Thank you.
~Keith
You need to setup an extra table to map each month name to a running number. A simple 12 row table like
Jan 1
Feb 2
Mar 3
..
Dec 12
Then create a relationship between this month table and your month column
Now, go to "table view" in Power BI and set the sort by column to month number for the month name column on this new table.
Finally, use the new table's month name whenever you need to refer to the month name in the visuals.
They will be chronologically arranged.