Question about Merging two tables in Power BI

[bthumble]

Hello Everyone. I am a beginner in Power BI and creating a new report. Would like to do a vlookup from one table to the other, and my online research states I should merge the two tables. Tried doing this, but I am unable to see the data, or not sure if I am not looking at it correctly.

Table1 has a customer number and Table2 has the customer number and location information about the customer (city and state). I would like to have Table1 + City and State. How do you suggest that I do this?

 

[bthumble]

I was able to do this using the DAX function LookupValue.

 

[Matt Allington]

You can do this, but you really shouldn’t. Instead of merging tables, Power BI is designed to join tables. Once 2 tables are joined with a 1 to many relationship, every column in the second table become available to the first table. Read my article here

The Optimal Shape for Power BI Data

It is common for self taught Power Pivot users to get the shape of their data all wrong. This article describes the optimal way to do it.

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