How to Change Title of Visual in Power BI

A clear, informative title on a chart can be the difference between a confusing report and a brilliant one. While Power BI automatically generates titles for your visuals, they are often generic and don't tell the full story. This tutorial will walk you through everything you need to know about changing the title of a visual in Power BI, from simple text edits to creating powerful, dynamic titles that update automatically.

Why Your Visual Titles Matter So Much

Before jumping into the "how," it's worth taking a moment to understand the "why." The title is often the first thing a person reads on a chart. It sets the context and tells them what they’re looking at. A well-crafted title does a few important things:

• Provides Instant Clarity: A title like "Sales Amount and Date" (Power BI's default) is okay, but "Monthly Sales Trend for Q3 2023" is far better. It immediately tells the viewer the what, how, and when.
• Reduces Cognitive Load: When titles are clear, your audience doesn't have to waste mental energy figuring out what the chart represents. They can focus directly on interpreting the data and finding insights.
• Adds Professionalism: Taking the time to customize details like titles makes your entire report look more polished, thoughtful, and professional. It shows you care about the end user's experience.
• Enhances Storytelling: Good data reporting is about telling a story. Your titles are the headlines of each chapter, guiding the reader through the narrative you've built.

In short, customizing your visual titles is a small effort that pays huge dividends in the overall quality and effectiveness of your Power BI reports.

The Easy Method: Changing a Static Title

The most straightforward way to change a title is to simply type in new text manually. This is perfect for when the context of your chart is fixed and doesn't need to change based on user interactions like filters or slicers. Let's walk through it step-by-step.

Step-by-Step Instructions

For this example, imagine you have a basic bar chart showing sales by country.

1. Select Your Visual: First, click on the chart or visual you want to modify. You'll know it's selected when you see a border appear around it.
2. Open the Formatting Pane: With the visual selected, look to the Visualizations pane on the right side of your screen. Click on the icon that looks like a paintbrush, which is the Format your visual tab.
3. Navigate to the Title Settings: In the Format pane, click on the General tab at the top. This is where you'll find formatting options that apply to the overall visual, not just the data points.
4. Expand the Title Section: You will see a list of formatting options. Find and click on Title to expand its settings. If your visual doesn't have a title, you'll first need to toggle it on.
5. Change the Title Text: Inside the expanded menu, you'll see a text box under Text. This is where you can type your new custom title. Replace the default text (e.g., "Sum of Sales by Country") with something more descriptive, like "Total Sales Revenue by Country" or "Top Performing Countries by Sales."

That's it! You've just changed your static title. It's a simple process, but one you'll use constantly when building reports.

Giving Your Titles Some Style: Customization Options

Beyond just changing the text, Power BI gives you plenty of options to make your titles look exactly how you want. These settings are all found in the same General → Title section in the formatting pane.

• Heading: You can change the heading level (H1, H2, etc.) for semantic structure, although this has a minimal visual impact on the report canvas itself.
• Font: Choose a new font family, adjust the font size, and apply formatting like Bold, Italic, or <u>Underline</u>.
• Text color: Change the color of your title's text to match your company's branding or to create better contrast.
• Background color: Add a colored background to your title to make it stand out from the rest of the visual.
• Horizontal alignment: Align your title to the left, center, or right of the visual. Center alignment is often the default and a safe choice for readability.
• Text wrapping: If you have a long title, toggling this on will allow the text to wrap onto a new line instead of being cut off.
• Subtitle: You can toggle on a subtitle to add a secondary line of text for more context without cluttering the main title. All the same text formatting options are available for the subtitle.
• Divider: Toggling this on adds a simple line below your title and subtitle, visually separating it from the chart area.
• Spacing: Adjust the vertical space above or below the title area.

Experiment with these settings to find a style that is both clear and consistent with the overall design of your report.

Going Pro: Creating Dynamic Titles with DAX

Now for the really powerful stuff. A dynamic title is one that changes automatically based on user selections in your report, usually from slicers or filters. This is incredibly useful for providing real-time context to your viewers. For example, if a user filters the report to see data for "Canada," the chart title can automatically update to read "Sales for Canada."

This requires a little bit of DAX (Data Analysis Expressions), but don't be intimidated. We'll use a very simple and common formula.

Step 1: Create a DAX Measure for the Title

First, you need to create a measure that will define what the title should say. Let’s stick with our example and assume you have a slicer for the "Region" field.

1. Create a New Measure: Right-click on your data table in the Data pane (on the far right) and select New measure.
2. Enter the DAX Formula: The DAX formula bar will appear at the top. Here, we'll use the SELECTEDVALUE function. This function checks if a single value has been selected for a specific column.

Type the following formula into the bar and press Enter:

Dynamic Title = "Region Sales: " & SELECTEDVALUE('YourTableName'[Region], "All Regions")

Breaking Down the Formula:

• Dynamic Title = This is just the name of our new measure.
• "Region Sales: " This is a static piece of text that will always appear at the beginning of our title. Notice the space after the colon, this ensures proper spacing.
• & The ampersand joins the static text with the dynamic part of our formula.
• SELECTEDVALUE('YourTableName'[Region], "All Regions") This is the core of the dynamic function.

Step 2: Connect the DAX Measure to the Visual's Title

Now that you have your measure, you just need to tell your visual to use it as its title.

1. Select Your Visual: Click on the same chart you want the dynamic title on.
2. Return to the Title Settings: Go back to the formatting pane: Format your visual → General → Title.
3. Click the FX Button: To the right of the Text box where you would normally type a static title, you'll see a small button labeled fx (Conditional formatting). Click it.
4. Set the Field Value: A new window will pop up.

• For Format style, keep it as "Field value."
• For What field should we base this on?, click the dropdown menu and find your DAX measure (e.g., "Dynamic Title").

1. Press OK: Once you've selected your measure, click "OK."

Your chart's title will now be controlled by your DAX measure. Go ahead and test it out! Click on a single region in your slicer. The title should instantly update. If you clear the selection, it should revert back to showing "Region Sales: All Regions." It's a fantastic feature for making your reports more interactive and user-friendly.

Final Thoughts

Mastering visual titles is a fundamental skill in Power BI that significantly elevates the quality of your reports. You can now confidently set clear static titles for fixed charts and use the power of DAX to create dynamic, context-aware titles that react to user choices, making your reports much more intuitive and professional.

Manually building, formatting, and refining reports in tools like Power BI can be incredibly time-consuming. We built Graphed to take that painstaking work off your plate. Instead of clicking through menus to format titles or writing DAX formulas, you can simply connect your data sources and describe what you want to see in plain English. We handle the rest, from creating the charts to providing clear titles and visualizations automatically, turning hours of tedious report-building into a quick 30-second task.