How to Remove Decimals in Power BI Matrix

Nothing clutters up a Power BI matrix like unnecessary decimals. When you're showing values like user counts, product units, or session totals, seeing trailing numbers like "2,456.00" can make your reports look unprofessional and confuse your audience. This guide will walk you through a few simple methods to remove decimals and get your data looking clean and clear.

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Why Does Formatting Numbers Matter?

Before getting into the "how," let's briefly touch on the "why." Consistently formatted data is easier to read and understand at a glance. When you're presenting key performance indicators, your goal is to communicate information as quickly and efficiently as possible. Clean formatting helps in a few key ways:

• Clarity and Readability: "5,000 users" is instantly understood, while "5,000.00" forces the brain to do a tiny bit of extra work to confirm the number is an integer. Remove that friction.
• Professionalism: Well-formatted reports show attention to detail and build trust with your stakeholders. A messy matrix with inconsistent decimal places can undermine the quality of your analysis.
• Accuracy Perception: Displaying decimals for whole-number metrics (like the number of people who visited your site) is technically incorrect and confusing. You can't have half a visitor. Matching your formatting to the metric's real-world meaning prevents misinterpretation.

Fortunately, Power BI gives you several easy ways to control this formatting, from simple UI clicks to powerful DAX functions.

Method 1: The Quickest Fix using the Ribbon Menu

For most situations, the fastest way to remove decimals is by using the contextual ribbon menus in Power BI Desktop. This method changes the formatting for the entire column or measure wherever it's used in your report, ensuring consistency.

Follow these steps:

Step 1: Select Your Data Field

You can do this in a few different places, but the most common are the Report View or the Data View.

• In the Report View (where you build your visuals), click on your matrix visual. In the "Data" pane on the right-hand side, find and click on the field that has the decimals you want to remove.
• Alternatively, you can go to the Data View by clicking its icon on the left-hand navigation bar. Then, in the "Data" pane, click on the column name you want to format.

Once you select the field, a new contextual tab will appear in the top ribbon: either "Column tools" if it's a regular column or "Measure tools" if it's a DAX measure.

Example: Let's say you have a measure called "Average Session Duration" that shows "180.34", and you want it to display as "180". You would find and select "Average Session Duration" in the Data pane.

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Step 2: Adjust the Formatting in the Ribbon

With your data field selected, look at the "Column tools" or "Measure tools" ribbon at the top of the screen. You'll see a "Formatting" section.

Here you have two primary options:

Option A: Change the Format to "Whole number"

This is the most direct approach. In the Formatting section of the ribbon:

1. Click the format drop-down that likely says "General" or "Decimal number."
2. Select "Whole number" from the list.

Power BI will immediately reformat the numbers in that column to integers, adding comma separators where appropriate. All decimal values will disappear across your entire report for this specific field.

Option B: Manually Set Decimal Places to Zero

If you prefer more granular control or if the "Whole number" format isn’t quite right, you can simply set the number of decimal places.

1. Make sure the format is set to "Decimal number."
2. To the right of the format dropdown, you'll see a box for decimal places.
3. Type 0 in this box and press Enter.

The result is the same: the decimals are removed. This is useful if you want to keep the "Decimal number" data type but just hide the decimal points for display purposes.

After applying either of these options, your matrix visual will instantly update, showing clean integers without any extra decimal noise.

Method 2: Using DAX Functions for Precise Control

Sometimes you need more surgical control over formatting, especially when creating new measures. For example, you might want to round a number in a specific way as part of a calculation, not just for display. This is where DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) comes in handy.

There are three main DAX functions you can use to deal with decimals: ROUND, INT, and FORMAT.

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Using the ROUND Function

The ROUND function does exactly what its name implies: it rounds a number to a specified number of digits. This is the best DAX method if you want to mathematically round your value (e.g., 5.6 becomes 6, and 5.4 becomes 5) and keep it as a number for further calculations.

Syntax of ROUND:

ROUND(<,number>, <num_digits>)

To remove decimals, you set <num_digits> to 0.

Let's say you have a measure calculating the average items per order, and you want to create a new, rounded version. Your new DAX measure would look like this:

Avg Items Per Order (Rounded) = ROUND( [Original Avg Items Per Order], 0 )

This new measure will contain the rounded values and can be used in your matrix. More importantly, it remains a numeric data type, so you can still perform sums, averages, or other calculations on it without issues.

Using the INT Function

The INT (Integer) function is another option, but it behaves differently from ROUND. Instead of mathematical rounding, INT always rounds down to the nearest integer. It effectively truncates, or cuts off, the decimal part entirely.

Syntax of INT:

INT(<,number>)

• INT(99.99) returns 99.
• INT(5.2) returns 5.

This is useful when you only care about whole numbers completed, like "full years of service" or "number of full units sold."

Your DAX measure would look something like:

Completed Units Sold = INT( [Average Units Per Sale] )

Just like ROUND, INT returns a numeric data type.

Using the FORMAT Function

The FORMAT function gives you the ultimate power to display your number exactly how you want. However, it comes with a major catch: it converts your number into a text string.

Syntax of FORMAT:

FORMAT(<value>, <format_string>)

To show a number without decimals, you can use the "0" format string:

Total Sales Formatted = FORMAT( [Total Sales Amount], "0" )

To include comma separators for thousands, you'd use:

Total Sales Formatted = FORMAT( [Total Sales Amount], "#,##0" )

An Important Warning: Because FORMAT turns your number into text, you will likely lose the ability to sort numerically (it will sort alphabetically like "1, 10, 2, 25") and you cannot use the result in further mathematical calculations as if it were a number. Use FORMAT only for final outputs where the field is purely for display in a table or matrix.

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When to Use Which DAX Function

• Use ROUND when you need standard mathematical rounding and want to keep the value as a number.
• Use INT when you need to round down or truncate the decimal part and keep the value as a number.
• Use FORMAT only when you need to control the final visual presentation and don't need to sort or calculate with the results.

Bonus Tip: Format Multiple Columns at Once

If you've just loaded a new dataset and five different columns came in with unwelcome decimal places, formatting them one-by-one is tedious. Instead, use the Model View for bulk editing.

1. Click on the Model View icon on the left navigation panel.
2. In the Data pane on the right, hold down the Ctrl key and click to select all the different columns you want to reformat.
3. As you select them, look at the Properties pane below. You will see all the formatting options there.
4. Expand the Formatting section, change the "Format" to Whole number or set the "Decimal places" to 0.

Just like that, you've applied the same formatting change to all selected columns simultaneously, saving you a bunch of time.

Final Thoughts

Taming unruly decimals in a Power BI matrix comes down to choosing the right tool for the job. For quick, report-wide changes, the formatting options in the "Column tools" or "Measure tools" ribbon are your best bet. If your formatting is part of a nuanced calculation, DAX functions like ROUND and INT give you the precise control needed to manipulate your numbers correctly.

The ultimate goal with any report or dashboard is to get clear answers from your data without unnecessary friction. We built Graphed for this very reason - to eliminate the repetitive, manual tasks like data formatting that slow you down. Instead of clicking through menus or writing DAX, you can simply ask for what you need in plain language, and Graphed instantly builds a clean, perfectly formatted dashboard, connecting all your marketing and sales data in one place, so you get insights in seconds, not hours.