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Bharti Goel
- December 30, 2022
Do you know Power BI or Interested to learn Power BI? If the answer is Yes, then you should also know External Tools in Power BI Desktop. Today we will discuss Tabular Editor (One of the External Tools in Power BI). So what is Tabular Editor, and How to get it? what challenges do we face, and so many things to learn here.
The External Tools ribbon in Power BI helps with easy access to external tools that we install locally and register with Power BI Desktop. When launched from the External Tools ribbon, Power BI Desktop passes the name and port number of its internal data model engine instance and the current model’s name to the tool. The tool then automatically connects, providing an easy connection experience.
There are N number of external tools that can be integrated with Power BI Desktop. But here in this blog, we will talk about this particular Editor.
What is Tabular Editor
Let’s discuss this external tool. The tool makes your work more effective with the Power BI Desktop data model. It can directly write to a Power BI Desktop file. Hence, if you change something in the Editor, you can save it in the Tabular Editor. Also, the change appears in Power BI and vice versa.
This Editor lets you easily manipulate and manage measures, calculated columns, display folders, perspectives, and translations in Analysis Services Tabular and Power BI Models.
Background: Tabular Editor
Danish Principal Architect and Microsoft Data MVP Daniel Otykier, working for Kapacity created Tabular Editor in 2016. He worked with the MS BI stack for 12+ years. He was also a C#/.Net developer for 15+ years.
As Microsoft transitioned from XMLA to JSON in 2016, this editor is only available from the 2016 SQL Server Analysis Server (SSAS). And, it is also built around the JSON Metadata. It is based on the programming language C# and, more specifically, the WinForms Application.
Tabular Editor was originally designed for SSAS. But as Power BI Desktop runs on SSAS, it works perfectly for Power BI as well. With the July 2020 version of Power BI, it is now possible to fully integrate this Editor and Power BI.
Pre-requisites
- Power BI Desktop Version – July 2020 or newer
- The latest version of Tabular Editor
How to get this Editor
This is available in two different versions:
- Tabular Editor 2.x (free)
- Tabular Editor 3.x (commercial with 30 days free trial)
You can download the latest version of Tableau Editor.
Use Cases
- Quick and friendly User Interface
- Calculation Groups
- Scripting
- Best Practices Analyzer
- Create Custom KPI
- Object Level Security
Challenges
- There is no diagram view in the Editor, so hard to understand if you are new to the relationship view.
- Good to know some DAX before.
- It is good to know the difference between Calculated Columns and Measures.
These are all the basic concepts about this Editor. We hope you get an idea about the tool. We suggest that you check more content on External tools in Power BI Desktop.
FAQ: Tabular Editor
Q1. Who should learn Tabular Editor in a corporate team?
Business analysts, BI developers, and data modelers who manage complex Power BI datasets benefit the most. Even team leads can use it to ensure standardized calculations and governance across reports.
Q2. Can managers use Tabular Editor without technical expertise?
Managers can use it at a high level to check KPIs, calculation groups, and best practice compliance, but detailed scripting or advanced modeling requires familiarity with DAX and measures.
Q3. How can corporate teams collaborate using Tabular Editor?
Team members can work on the same Power BI model, update calculation groups, and apply consistent measures. Changes are reflected immediately in Power BI Desktop, promoting smooth collaboration among analysts.
Q4. How does it help HR or finance teams?
HR or finance analysts dealing with large datasets can use Tabular Editor to create reusable measures, calculate metrics like attrition or revenue variance, and standardise calculations across multiple dashboards.
Q5. Are there corporate training programs for this?
Yes, Edu4Sure offers corporate training tailored to team roles, focusing on workflow optimization, calculation management, and real-world business use cases to make teams efficient in analytics projects.
