How to Add Text in Power BI Dashboard

While Power BI is exceptional at creating impactful charts and graphs, the story behind your data often needs words to give it context. A dashboard filled with unexplained visuals can leave your audience confused rather than informed. This post walks you through several methods for adding text to your Power BI Dashboard, from simple static labels to dynamic, data-driven titles. You’ll learn how to add basic descriptions and even create text that updates automatically as your data changes.

The Simplest Method: Using Text Boxes

The most straightforward way to add text is by using a text box. This is your go-to method for adding titles, section headings, explanatory paragraphs, or any other static text that provides context for your visuals.

Think of text boxes as the digital equivalent of sticky notes you’d place on a report to add comments. They’re perfect when you need to write a descriptive header above a group of related charts or add a footnote explaining where the data comes from.

How to Add a Text Box: A Step-by-Step Guide

On the Power BI Desktop canvas, go to the Insert tab in the top ribbon.
Click on the Text Box icon. A box will appear on your report canvas.
Click inside the box and start typing your text.

Once you’ve added the text box, a formatting pane will appear on the right side of your screen. This is where you can customize its appearance:

Font: Change the font family, size, color, and apply bold, italic, or underline styles.
Alignment: Left, center, or right align your text horizontally and vertically.
Bulleted Lists: Create bulleted or numbered lists directly within the text box.
Background and Borders: In the Effects section of the visual “Format” pane, you can add a colored background to your text box, adjust its transparency, and add a border to make it stand out.

Practical Tip: Use text boxes to create headers that group related visuals. For instance, if you have three charts related to sales performance, you could add a text box above them with the title "Quarterly Sales Performance Analysis." This simple act brings a clear structure to your dashboard and enhances understanding.

Showing Off Key Metrics with Card Visuals

When you want to highlight a single, crucial number — like total revenue, number of new customers, or average response time — the Card visual is your best friend. While its primary function is to display numbers, it’s fundamentally a text element dedicated to showcasing key performance indicators (KPIs).

How to Use a Card Visual for Text and Numbers

In the Visualizations pane, click on the Card icon (the one that looks like "123").
With the new Card visual selected on your canvas, drag a single data field you want to display into the Fields well. For example, you might pull in a "Total Revenue" measure.
Power BI will display the value, automatically summarizing it (often as a sum or count).

Customizing Your Card Visual

The real power of Cards comes from their formatting options. You can transform them into visually appealing and context-rich elements on your dashboard:

Callout Value: This is the main number displayed. You can control its font size, color, display units (e.g., thousands, millions), and decimal places. Sometimes making this value large and bold is all you need to draw attention.
Category Label: This is the small text that appears underneath the callout value. By default, it’s the name of the data field you used, but you can turn it off and use the visual’s Title instead if you prefer more formatting control.
Title: You can add a more descriptive title by going to Format visual > General > Title. For example, instead of the default 'Sum Of Sales', you could create a title like "Total YTD Revenue" for additional value in your dashboard.

You can also use a card to display text from your dataset. If you have a column with product names or category classifications, you could drag that into a Card and use filtering to display specific text based on your data.

LEVEL UP: Unlocking Dynamic Text Power with DAX!

This is where the data analytics fun truly begins. Static text is useful, but DAX in Power BI can pull data that will make your titles, cards, and descriptions update based on user interactions.

Imagine a title for your report dashboard that reads: "Sales Report for the Pacific Region in Q3 2024." Now, imagine you change the "Region" filter to "Midwest" and DAX automatically updates the headline to state, "Sales Report for the Midwest Region in Q3 2024."

How to Create Dynamic Titles Using DAX

Right-click the data table that contains relevant information in the Visualizations panel and select New Measure.
Give your Measure a name, like TitleDynamic, and type your DAX formula into the formula bar. For example:

This dynamic formula uses DAX to combine static text ("Performance Report for ") with user-selected data in your report. If no region is selected, you can set it to default to a specific text.

Adding Context with Tooltips

Tooltips in Power BI provide additional context without clutter by revealing text when a user interacts with a visual. This keeps your dashboard clean and focused.

How to Create Custom Tooltips

First, create a separate page in your report dedicated to your tooltip.

In Power BI Desktop, go to the Page options under Canvas Settings, and create a Tooltip page.
Design this page as a small report with visuals that you intend to show when users hover over a data point in the main report.
Go to the specific visual on your main report, and in the visual's Format section, enable the Tooltip option, then point it to the custom tooltip page you made.

This allows you to provide deeper insights without overcrowding your main dashboard, and it's a great way to add layers of information while maintaining a clean and professional look.

Final Thoughts

Effectively adding text turns a good Power BI dashboard into a great one by ensuring the data doesn’t just show what’s happening, but explains why. Whether it's simple text visuals, dynamic titles, or using card visuals with filtering techniques, text enriches your Power BI dashboards significantly. Enhancing your dashboard's storytelling with text not only makes it more informative but also more engaging to the audience. For advanced features and seamless scheduling, try Graphed to improve your workflow.