A case statement is a type of statement that goes through conditions and returns a value when the first condition is met.

The easiest way to implement a case statement in Power BI is by using the SWITCH function in DAX, which uses the following basic syntax:

new = SWITCH(
            'my_data'[Position],
            "G", "Guard",
            "F", "Forward",
            "C", "Center",
            "None"
            )

This particular example creates a new column named new that looks at the value in the Position column of the table named my_data and returns the following value:

• “Guard” if Position is equal to “G”
• “Forward” if Position is equal to “F”
• “Center” if Position is equal to “C”
• “None” if the Position column does not contain any of the previous values

The following example shows how to use this function in practice.

Example: How to Write a Case Statement in Power BI

Suppose we have the following table named my_data in Power BI that contains information about various basketball players:

Suppose we would like to create a new column that contains the values Guard, Forward and Center instead of C, G and F.

To do so, we can click the Table tools tab, then click the New column icon:

Next, we can type the following formula into the formula bar:

new = SWITCH(
            'my_data'[Position],
            "G", "Guard",
            "F", "Forward",
            "C", "Center",
            "None"
            )

This will create a new column named new that contains the values that we specified in the SWITCH function:

Notice that this formula returns the following values in the new column:

• “Guard” if Position is equal to “G”
• “Forward” if Position is equal to “F”
• “Center” if Position is equal to “C”
• “None” if the Position column does not contain any of the previous values

Notice that the last value in the new column returns a value of “None” since we didn’t specify a specific value to return for “Z” in the formula.

Note: You can find the complete documentation for the SWITCH function in DAX here.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Power BI:

Power BI: A Simple Formula for “If Contains”
Power BI: How to Write an IF Statement
Power BI: How to Write an IF Statement with Multiple Conditions