Microsoft Power BI Cheat Sheet 2026

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

1. What is a 'Waterfall chart' best used for in Power BI? → Visualizing how positive and negative values contribute to a running total
2. Which storage mode keeps queries running against the source without importing data? → DirectQuery
3. What does the DAX time intelligence function TOTALYTD() calculate? → The cumulative total from the start of the year to the current date in context
4. Which Power BI refresh strategy updates only the newly added or changed data partitions rather than reloading the entire dataset? → Incremental refresh
5. Which DAX function evaluates an expression in a context modified by filters? → CALCULATE
6. What is the maximum dataset size supported in a Power BI Pro shared workspace? → 1 GB
7. What is the maximum number of times a Power BI Pro dataset can be scheduled to refresh per day? → 8 times
8. What does incremental refresh primarily improve? → Refresh performance by only loading new or changed data
9. The data limit point of confinement in the free Power BI adaption is... → 1GB/client
10. What is the primary purpose of the On-premises Data Gateway in Power BI? → To enable Power BI Service to securely access on-premises data sources
11. What language does Power Query use for its advanced editor transformations? → M language (M formula language)
12. What does 'Query Folding' mean in Power BI's Power Query? → Pushing data transformation steps back to the data source as native queries
13. Microsoft released Power BI Embedded in which year? → 2016
14. What is the purpose of a drillthrough page in a Power BI report? → Show detailed data for a selected item
15. Which built-in Power BI connector is specifically designed to connect to Salesforce CRM data? → Salesforce Objects connector
16. What does 'Merge Queries' do in Power Query? → Joins two tables based on matching key columns, similar to a SQL JOIN
17. Which DAX function returns a related value from a table on the one side of a relationship? → RELATED
18. Power BI Plus is available for a month-to-month membership fee of less than how much US$ per license? → $10.00
19. In Power BI, what type of relationship allows you to filter in both directions between two tables? → Bidirectional cross-filter
20. In Power BI, what is the purpose of a 'bridge table' in a many-to-many relationship scenario? → To resolve many-to-many relationships by breaking them into two one-to-many relationships
21. What isn't a Power BI visual that's built-in? → Power KPI
22. Which feature lets users ask questions in natural language to generate visuals? → Q&A
23. In Power Query, what does 'Promote Headers' do? → Uses the first row of data as the column header names
24. What feature allows reusable, cloud-based ETL logic shared across reports? → Dataflows
25. What is a 'Parameter' in Power Query and what is it used for? → A named value that can be referenced in queries to make them dynamic or configurable
26. Which of the following is NOT a valid storage mode in Power BI Desktop? → Hybrid Query
27. Which DAX function is used to activate an inactive relationship in a measure calculation? → USERELATIONSHIP()
28. What is a 'Treemap' chart in Power BI best suited for? → Displaying hierarchical data as nested, proportionally sized rectangles
29. What does the 'Replace Values' transformation in Power Query do? → Replaces specified values in a column with a different value
30. What is a composite model in Power BI? → A model combining Import and DirectQuery sources