#PowerBI – Copy a measure in the desktop – Why it doesn’t always work – mystery solved

Well – creating measures in the Power BI desktop is usually doing a lot of copying and pasting of measures.

And unfortunately, we haven’t yet gotten a Copy measure in the shortcut menu when we right click a measure

Here is an idea you can vote for if you would find it useful as well – https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/13219620-duplicate-measure-and-format-copy

So we end up copying the formula from text in the formula bar

And click new measure and Paste it into the formula bar

 

But 8 of 10 times nothing is pasted (at least when I select) – WHY ???

 

And now I finally took me the time to find out why –

Notice the colour of the selection in the picture above compare to this

If the colour is darker blue you can copy and paste but if its lighter blue – you can’t – and this is properly because you use your mouse to select the formula and if you release the mouse outside of the formula bar area – the selection will be light blue and when you then press CTRL + C to copy the formula text isn’t copied to the clipboard.

Solution

So, either make sure you don’t move your pointer outside the area or use CTRL + A to select all and then press CTRL + C to copy the formula.

 

Hope this can save you a couple of clicks and please vote for the idea – https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/13219620-duplicate-measure-and-format-copy – this also includes the idea that the formatting of the value should be included.

 

Power On!