Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield Microsoft Certified Data Analyst Associate facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. In Power BI, what does the 'Spotlight' feature do when activated from a visual's context menu? → It focuses attention on one visual by dimming all other visuals on the report page
2. What is the Decomposition Tree visual in Power BI primarily designed for? → Breaking down a metric across multiple dimensions interactively to identify contributors
3. What SQL clause should be used to copy every row from one table to another? → SELECT - INTO
4. A report has a slicer for 'Year' and a bar chart. You want the chart to ignore the slicer filter. What should you configure? → Edit interactions and set the slicer to have no filter on the chart
5. Which DAX function returns the number of rows in a table or the number of non-blank values in a column? → COUNTROWS
6. Which Power BI service feature enables automatic page refresh at a defined interval for real-time data monitoring? → Automatic page refresh
7. What kind of database would work best for an organizational chart? → graph
8. Which Power BI visual type is best suited for displaying trends over a continuous time period? → Line chart
9. What does publishing a Power BI report from Desktop to the Service do? → Uploads the report and its dataset to a Power BI workspace
10. Which aggregation function in Power BI would you use to count only the distinct values in a column? → DISTINCTCOUNT
11. Automatically scaling a program to make sure it has the resources required to satisfy user demands is an example of . → Elasticity
12. What does the 'Is Hidden' property do when applied to a table or column in Power BI? → Hides it from the Fields pane in report view but keeps it in the model
13. What does the EARLIER function do in DAX? → References an outer row context within a nested row context iteration
14. How can you reference a parameter in a Power Query M expression? → By typing the parameter name directly as a value in the expression
15. What does the CALCULATE function do in DAX? → Evaluates an expression in a modified filter context
16. What happens when you have an ambiguous relationship path between tables in Power BI? → Power BI requires you to use USERELATIONSHIP in DAX to specify which path to use
17. What does the 'Conditional Column' feature in Power Query allow you to do? → Add a new column with values determined by if/then/else rules without writing M code
18. What is the purpose of a 'drillthrough' page in Power BI? → To provide a dedicated detail page that users navigate to by right-clicking a data point
19. What happens to a Power BI report when the underlying dataset schema changes and a field used in a visual is removed? → The visual shows an error indicating a missing field
20. What is the purpose of the VAR keyword in DAX? → To declare a variable and store an expression result for reuse within a formula
21. Which relationship cardinality type is most commonly used between fact tables and dimension tables in a star schema? → One-to-many
22. Which type of cloud service gives you the most control over the equipment used to run applications? → Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
23. In Power BI, which visual feature allows report users to type questions about their data in natural language and receive an automatic visualization? → Q&A visual
24. What function does Power BI's Row Level Security (RLS) serve? → Restricting data access for the given users ( By assigning users to roles)
25. Which Power BI chart type displays hierarchical data as nested rectangles where each rectangle's size represents its proportional value? → Treemap
26. To support customer equipment, you employ Dynamics 365 Field Service. Which feature can you employ to offer preventative service? → Connected Field Service
27. Which Power BI feature allows you to ask natural language questions about your data and get visual answers? → Q&A
28. What does the Selection Pane in Power BI allow report developers to manage? → The visibility and layer order (z-order) of visuals on a report page
29. What is the primary purpose of slicers in Power BI reports? → To filter data visually on a report page
30. You must create a low-code application that has web forms for gathering and displaying user data. Which should you employ? → Power Apps