Quick Tips: How to Sort Matrix by Column in Descending Order

Today Microsoft released Power BI Desktop March 2020 which I was hoping that it includes a simple feature on Matrix visual to be able to sort the Martix by column in descending order, but, it doesn’t. So, in this post I quickly show you how to sort Matrix by column in descending order.

Here is the scenario. One of my customers is building a report in Power BI showing sales by Year, Month and Day of Week in a Matrix as below.

Sorting Matrix Visual in Power BI

Everything looks fine! But looking at the Matrix sorting quickly reveals that such feature is NOT available (YET). But the customer would like to see the Matrix sorted by Year in descending order, something like this.

Sorting Matrix by Column Headers in Descending Order

Here is the solution which is super simple.

Add a new “Year” column, either in Power Query or using DAX. I use DAX just to keep it as simple as possible

MatrixSortDescYear = 'Date'[Year]

Add another column which keeps the order of the new “MatrixSortDescYear” in descending order like below:

MatrixSortDescYearOrder = -( 'Date'[Year] )

Sort the first column by the second one

Power BI Desktop Sort Column by another Column

Now put the “MatrixSortDescYear” in columns section in Matrix and remove previous “Year” column

Voila! Easy, simple and neat!

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