Yesterday we saw a beautiful example of panel charts with R. Today let me show you how to create the same (or even better) with Power BI & R.

What you need:
- Power BI Desktop and R
- Raw data set – rem-data.csv
Creating Panel Charts in Power BI with R
- Load CSV data in to Power BI
- Edit the query in so we can transform the data in to Pivot shape in Power Query
- Apply below steps in Power Query
- Group data by Group and Branch with aggregations on count (named Branch Count) and All rows (named Ratings)

- We get a totals by group and branch level.
- Expand Ratings table and show only Ratings column
- This creates a table with all group, branch and rating combinations along with branch total
- Group again, this time on Group, Branch, Branch total and Ratings with aggregation on count.

- Calculate count as percent of Branch count
- Format the percentage as percent
- Close and apply to Load this data in to Power BI
- Group data by Group and Branch with aggregations on count (named Branch Count) and All rows (named Ratings)
- Insert R script visualization
- Add Group, Branch, Ratings and Pct to values area. This creates a dataframe with all 4 columns.
- Add below R script and your visualization is ready.
library(tidyverse)
ggplot(data=dataset) +
geom_bar(aes(x=Rating, y=Pct), stat="identity")+
scale_x_discrete(limits = c("NME","AME","SP","OP","NR"))+
facet_wrap(~Branch, nrow=1)+
theme(strip.text.x = element_text(size = 8))
To run the R script, simply press play button in R script editor pane.
Enhancing your visualization – Adding a slicer on Group
This creates a truly powerful interactive panel chart in Power BI. Simply add Group as a slicer and play with it. Every time you select a new Group, Power BI runs the R script with filtered data fed to the dataframe. There is a second or two lag, but the wait is totally worth it. 🙂
Creating Interactive Panel charts in Power BI with R – Video tut
Here is a video outlining the entire process along with some tips on how to use R in Power BI. Check it out below or on Chandoo.org YouTube channel.
Download Power BI workbook
Click here to download Power BI workbook for this. You may need to adjust the data source settings. Play with the slicer to refresh the R panel charts.
Have you tried Power BI yet?
I am playing with Power BI for last year or so and I am in love. You are going to hear more about it on Chandoo.org for sure.
What about you? Have you played with Power BI yet? What are your thoughts?
Related: Introduction to Power Query.














11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.