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How to Change Text in Card Power BI

Cody Schneider••8 min read

Power BI's Card visual is perfect for highlighting a single, crucial number on your dashboard, like total sales or website users. But its default appearance can be a bit plain. If you've been wondering how to make that text stand out, add context, or even change it dynamically based on your data, you're in the right place. This guide will walk you through everything from simple font and color changes to using DAX formulas for creating truly interactive and informative cards.

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What is a Power BI Card Visual?

Before we start tweaking, let's quickly review the Card visual. Its sole purpose is to display a single aggregated value from one of your data fields. It's designed to be a focal point - the kind of number you want your audience to see and understand instantly without having to dig through a chart.

The Card has two primary text components you'll interact with:

  • Callout Value: This is the large number itself. It's the main attraction.
  • Category Label: This is the smaller text beneath the callout value, which by default is the name of the data field (e.g., "Sum of Sales").

Found in the Visualizations pane, it’s one of the simplest visuals to create but has a surprising amount of text customization options hidden just beneath the surface.

Basic Formatting: Customizing Static Text in a Card

Let's start with the basics available in the formatting pane. Once you have a card on your report canvas, select it and click the paintbrush icon ("Format your visual") in the Visualizations pane.

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1. Changing the Callout Value (The Big Number)

The callout value is what immediately grabs attention, so getting it right is important. In the "Format" pane, under the "Visual" tab, you'll find the Callout value section. Here’s what you can do:

Font, Size, and Color:

  • Font: Choose a font family that matches your report's branding.
  • Size: Make it larger to emphasize its importance or smaller to fit into a tight space.
  • Color: Change the color to fit your design scheme or use a specific color to indicate performance (e.g., green for good, red for bad). You can dive into more advanced conditional coloring later.
  • Bold/Italic/Underline: Apply standard text styling for extra emphasis.

Display Units and Decimal Places: Beneath the font controls is the Display units dropdown. This is extremely useful for making large numbers more readable.

  • Auto: Power BI will decide whether to show the number in thousands (K), millions (M), billions (B), or trillions (T).
  • None: Displays the full number (e.g., 1,250,567).
  • Thousands, Millions, etc.: Manually force the unit you want to display.

The field for Value decimal places lets you control the precision of your number, which is especially helpful when dealing with precise figures or when using display units like "Millions." For example, showing 1.25M might be more useful than 1M.

2. Adjusting the Category Label (The Small Text)

Directly below the "Callout value" settings is the Category label section. The category label provides context for your callout value. You can format it just like the callout value:

  • Toggle it on or off completely.
  • Adjust the font, size, and color to be less prominent than the callout value.

One common frustration is trying to change the text of the category label itself. You can't just type new text into a box here. The text is inherited from the name of the data field you're using. To change it, you have a few options:

  1. Rename the Field: In the "Data" pane on the right, you can right-click the field and select "Rename" to change it for this visual (and any others using it).
  2. Use DAX (Recommended): For complete control, you can create a measure that returns a specific text string. We'll explore this powerful method shortly.

3. Adding and Formatting a Title

Sometimes, the category label isn't enough context. You might want a more descriptive title for your card. While most visuals have a title on by default, the card visual has it turned off. You can enable it in the formatting options as well.

  1. In the "Format" pane, navigate from the "Visual" tab to the General tab.
  2. Expand the Title section and switch the toggle to turn it "On."
  3. A text box will appear where you can type your desired title, for example, "Total Revenue - Q3 2024."
  4. You can fully format the title's font, size, text color, background color, and alignment (left, center, or right).

Using the title gives you more flexibility than relying on just the category label and allows you to add much more specific context to your KPI.

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Advanced Method: Creating Dynamic Text with DAX

This is where things get really powerful. What if you want your card's text to change based on a user's filter selection or a specific performance threshold? To do that, you need to create a DAX measure.

First, create a new measure by navigating to the "Home" tab and clicking New Measure. This opens the formula bar where you can write your calculation.

Example 1: Combining Text and Numbers

Instead of a card just showing $4.5M with "Sales" underneath, you could make it explicitly state: "Total Sales This Year: $4.5M." This provides full context in one visual.

Create a new measure with this formula:

Combined Sales Text = "Total Sales This Year: " & FORMAT([Your Total Sales Measure], "$#,##0")

How it works:

  • "Total Sales This Year: " is the static text you want to display.
  • The & sign is used to concatenate (join) text strings.
  • FORMAT() is a powerful DAX function that converts a number into text in a specific format. Here, we're formatting our sales measure to look like currency with a dollar sign and commas.

Once you create this measure, simply drag it onto a new card visual. You'll see your custom sentence instead of just a number. You will also want to hide the "Category Label" on this card since the context is now included with the value.

Example 2: Dynamically Changing Text Based on a Filter

Imagine you have a slicer for different years on your report. It would be great if your card's text automatically updated to reflect the selected year.

Let's create a measure for a dynamic title:

Dynamic Region Header = "Sales for " & SELECTEDVALUE('Geography'[Region], "All Regions")

How it works:

  • SELECTEDVALUE() checks if a single value has been selected from a specific column (in this case, the [Region] column from the 'Geography' table).
  • If one region is selected, it returns that value (e.g., "North America").
  • If no region or multiple regions are selected, it returns the optional alternative text we provided ("All Regions").

Drag this measure into a card visual, and it will update automatically as you interact with your region slicer or filter, providing instant, clear feedback to the user about what they are viewing.

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Example 3: Showing Conditional Text Based on Performance

Instead of just showing a number, a card can also display a status message. For instance, you could show "On Target" if you’ve met your sales goal, and "Action Required" if you haven't.

Create this new measure:

Sales Performance Status = 
VAR CurrentRevenue = [Total Revenue Measure]
VAR TargetRevenue = 5000000
RETURN
    IF(
        CurrentRevenue >= TargetRevenue, 
        "On Target!", 
        "Action Required"
    )

How it works:

  • VAR defines variables to store our current revenue and our goal, which makes the formula easier to read and maintain.
  • IF() checks if the CurrentRevenue is greater than or equal to the TargetRevenue.
  • If the condition is true, it returns the text "On Target!". Otherwise, it returns "Action Required."

You can even pair this with conditional formatting on the card's background or font color for a huge visual impact. Think of it as turning your card from a simple meter into an insightful alert system.

Final Thoughts

Customizing the text in a Power BI card ranges from straightforward formatting clicks to powerful, dynamic expressions using DAX. By progressing from mastering the callout value and category label to writing measures that combine text, respond to filters, and display conditional statuses, you can transform simple number boxes into smart, context-aware highlights in your reports.

Mastering these details is rewarding, but we know it can be time-consuming to create the perfect visualizations when all you want are fast answers. At My Company Name, we designed Graphed to cut through this complexity. Instead of tweaking visual settings and writing formulas, you can connect your data and just ask, “what were our total sales last quarter?” Graphed instantly gives you the number in a clean visual, saving you from navigating menus and letting you focus on the insights themselves.

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