New formatting options

Power BI Desktop, in its December edition, brought several new options for formatting Column and Bar visualizations, which we can use to make them much more functional and beautiful. In addition to this option, this “recipe” will show some new features that have been added to the data labels option. Relax and enjoy, here are some interesting contents…

Two tables have been imported into Power BI Desktop: Items and Transactions. We connected them in the model, and created a simple Column chart visual that shows the sold quantities in relation to the classification.

Let’s open the Formatting menu. In the Column section, it is now possible to adjust, for an individual column or the entire series, the transparency of the color with which they are displayed, as well as the color and transparency of the border. Within the Layout section, you can determine whether the sorting is done automatically by text or values, as well as in what order it will take place. Also, the distance between values or the distance between series could be adjusted. The latter comes into play when you create a Stacked Column or Stacked Bar chart.

Data Labels also got some improvements. Now it is possible to add and format the title (Title). It can be the name of the series or some other custom value. In the Detail section, it is possible to add an additional description based on a report dimension. Also, within the Background section you can determine the background color and degree of its transparency…