Different contact information depending on single or multiple contact columns in Power BI

Christoph Hermens

Data exported from Smartsheet with individual contact columns is displayed in Power BI as email addresses. Multiple contact columns, on the other hand, are displayed in Power BI as user names.
Is there a way or a setting to make this consistent?

Imported into Power BI using the Smartsheet Connector:

Thank you for your help!

Georgie

Hi @Christoph Hermens,

Having tested exporting a sheet with a single-select contact list column and a multi-select contact list column to other applications (Excel, Google Sheets, and to a PDF), I found that this behaviour doesn’t occur in those instances. This behaviour therefore appears to be restricted to Power BI.

As the integration is built by Microsoft, I’d recommend reaching out to their Support and/or Community channels to determine if there’s a setting that can be changed on the Power BI side to pull in contacts in a consistent way when importing data from Smartsheet. 

More information on the integration, including a link to Power BI support, can be found here:  https://www.smartsheet.com/marketplace/apps/microsoft-power-bi

As an alternative solution, you could adjust the sheet and use formulas to convert contacts from the multi-select contact list column to email addresses as plain text. This Community thread explains how to do this. Or, you could add a helper Text/Number column with the formula =[Single Contact Column]@row to display the full name from the single-select contact list column as plain text. 

Hope that’s helpful!

Georgie

Georgie

Hi @Christoph Hermens,

Having tested exporting a sheet with a single-select contact list column and a multi-select contact list column to other applications (Excel, Google Sheets, and to a PDF), I found that this behaviour doesn’t occur in those instances. This behaviour therefore appears to be restricted to Power BI.

As the integration is built by Microsoft, I’d recommend reaching out to their Support and/or Community channels to determine if there’s a setting that can be changed on the Power BI side to pull in contacts in a consistent way when importing data from Smartsheet. 

More information on the integration, including a link to Power BI support, can be found here:  https://www.smartsheet.com/marketplace/apps/microsoft-power-bi

As an alternative solution, you could adjust the sheet and use formulas to convert contacts from the multi-select contact list column to email addresses as plain text. This Community thread explains how to do this. Or, you could add a helper Text/Number column with the formula =[Single Contact Column]@row to display the full name from the single-select contact list column as plain text. 

Hope that’s helpful!

Georgie