How to Import Image in Power BI

Adding images to your Power BI reports can turn a bland wall of numbers into a dashboard that tells a compelling, tangible story. Instead of just "Product ID #4561," you can show the actual product, instead of an employee's name, you can show their headshot. This article walks you through the primary methods for importing and displaying images in your Power BI reports, from the simple to the more advanced, to help you bring your data to life.

Why Use Images in Power BI Reports?

Before we jump into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Integrating images directly into your reports and dashboards isn't just for looks - it serves important analytical and communication functions:

• Increased Comprehension: Humans process visual information thousands of times faster than text. Showing a product image next to its sales data allows your audience to instantly recognize and understand what they're looking at.
• Enhanced Context: An image can provide immediate context that numbers alone can't. Think of a real estate dashboard showing property photos next to pricing and neighborhood data, or a manufacturing report displaying pictures of machine parts next to performance metrics.
• Improved User Experience: A visually appealing report is more engaging. Slicers with brand logos, tables with employee headshots, or competitor analyses with company logos make the report more intuitive and pleasant to use, encouraging deeper exploration of the data.
• Professional Branding: Adding your company logo or custom icons ensures your reports look polished and consistent with your brand identity.

Before You Start: Best Practices for Handling Images

A little preparation can save you from major headaches down the road. Keep these tips in mind before you begin loading images.

• Image Hosting is Key: For the most common method (using URLs), your images must be publicly accessible on the web. This means they cannot be stored on your local computer or on a private network that requires a login, like SharePoint or Google Drive, without special configuration. Use a stable public host like your company website's media folder or a dedicated cloud storage service with public links.
• Watch Your File Size: Large, high-resolution images can dramatically slow down your report's loading and refresh times. Since the images in your report will likely be displayed as small thumbnails, resize and compress them before loading the data. Aim for the smallest file size possible without sacrificing acceptable quality.
• Consistency is a Must: Ensure all your images have consistent dimensions (aspect ratio). A table filled with a mix of portrait and landscape photos will look messy and misaligned. Standardize your images to a square or a consistent 16:9 format, for example.

Method 1: The Easiest Way - Using Public Image URLs

This is the most common and straightforward method. It involves adding a column of publicly accessible image URLs to your data source and telling Power BI to interpret that column as images.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready

First, ensure your data source (like an Excel file, Google Sheet, or database table) has a dedicated column containing the full, direct URL for each image. For example, if you're building a product sales report, your table might look something like this:

ProductID, ProductName, SalesAmount, ImageURL
101, "Classic Blue T-Shirt", 5430, "http://yourstore.com/images/blue-tshirt.jpg"
102, "Denim Jeans", 8120, "http://yourstore.com/images/denim-jeans.jpg"
103, "Leather Belt", 4560, "http://yourstore.com/images/leather-belt.jpg"

Step 2: Load Your Data into Power BI

Open Power BI Desktop. In the Home ribbon, click on Get Data and select your data source type (e.g., Excel workbook, Web). Select your file or enter the destination and click Load to bring the data into your Power BI model.

Step 3: Set the Data Category (The Crucial Step)

By default, Power BI sees your image URL column as just another piece of text. You need to tell it to treat those URLs as images.

1. Navigate to the Data view from the left-hand menu (the icon that looks like a table).
2. Find and select your table from the Fields pane on the right.
3. Click on the header of the column containing your image URLs (in our example, a column named "ImageURL").
4. A new tab called Column tools will appear in the top ribbon.
5. In the Properties group, find the Data category dropdown menu. By default, it will say "Uncategorized."
6. Click the dropdown and select Image URL.

That's it! You've successfully told Power BI what that column contains. A small image icon might appear next to the column name in the Fields pane.

Step 4: Use the Images in Your Report Visuals

Now, head back to the Report view (the canvas icon). You can add your images to several types of visuals:

• Table or Matrix: Drag your ImageURL field into the "Values" or "Rows" well of a Table or Matrix visual. The images will appear automatically. You can control their size by going to the visual's Format settings > Grid > Image size.
• Slicer: Drop the ImageURL field into a Slicer visual to create a highly-interactive, visual filter. This is great for letting users filter a report by product or employee photo.
• Cards & Multi-row Cards: You can display images in card visuals, which is perfect for showing a single, focused image when an item is selected on your report.

What If My Images Don't Appear?

If you see broken image icons or just the raw URLs, double-check these common issues:

• Did you correctly set the Data category in Step 3? This is the most common reason images fail to load.
• Are the URLs publicly accessible? Try pasting one of the URLs directly into your web browser's incognito mode. If it doesn't load there, Power BI can't access it either.
• Are there typos in the URL? Extra spaces or a missing "https:" can break the link.

Method 2: For Offline & Secure Images - Using Binary Data

What if your images are confidential, or if pulling them from the web every time is too slow? In this case, you can embed the image data directly into your Power BI model. This is more complex and can increase your file size, but it makes the report self-contained and faster to load once built.

For this to work, you need to convert your images into a Base64 text string - a way of encoding the image data so it can be stored just like any other piece of text in a column.

Step 1: Use Power Query to Convert Images to Base64

This process is done in Power Query Editor. Let's assume you have your image files saved in a folder on your computer.

1. In Power BI's Home ribbon, go to Get Data > More... > select Folder and click Connect. Enter the path to your image folder.
2. A file list will appear. Click Transform Data to open Power Query Editor.
3. You'll see a table listing all the files in the folder, including columns like "Content" and "Name". The "Content" column contains the actual binary data of each image. You can remove all columns except for Content and Name.
4. Now, we'll create a new custom column to hold the Base64 text. Click on the Add Column tab and then Custom Column.
5. Name your new column "ImageBase64". In the formula box, enter the following Power Query formula (M code). This formula converts the binary data into a text string and adds the mandatory prefix Power BI needs to render it.

"data:image/png,base64, " & Binary.ToText([Content], BinaryEncoding.Base64)

(Note: If your images are JPGs or another file type, you can change "image/png" to "image/jpeg" accordingly, but 'png' usually works for most types.)

1. Click OK. You now have a column full of very long text strings. You can remove the original "Content" column.
2. Click Close & Apply from the Home tab.

Step 2: Set the Data Category (Again!)

Just like with the URL method, you need to tell Power BI how to handle this new column. Click on the Data view, select your new "ImageBase64" column, go to Column tools, and set the Data category to... you guessed it, Image URL.

This might seem strange, but it's how Power BI recognizes the Base64 prefix and knows to render the string as an image. After that, you can add this field to your visuals just like in Method 1.

Method 3: Adding Static Images and Logos

Sometimes you don't need a dynamic, data-driven image. You just need to add a static image like your company logo or a report banner.

This is much simpler:

1. Make sure no visuals on your canvas are selected.
2. Go to the Insert tab in the ribbon.
3. Click the Image button and select the image file from your computer.

You can also use this feature for report layouts by inserting an image that acts as a design frame and then layering your other charts and tables on top of it. In the Format pane, go to the page settings and add an image as a page Canvas background for a seamless look.

Practical Example: A Simple Team Directory

Let's tie it all together. Imagine making a simple directory for a new company hire.

1. Data: Create a simple spreadsheet with columns for team members' names, their titles, and a URL to their professional headshot hosted on the company website.
2. Load & Prep: Load this sheet into Power BI. Go to the Data view, select the headshot URL column, and change its Data Category to Image URL.
3. Build the Visuals:

In just a few minutes, you've created an interactive visual directory that is far more intuitive and engaging than a plain list of names.

Final Thoughts

As we've seen, Power BI provides several powerful ways to integrate images into your reports, turning them from simple data dumps into rich, contextual dashboards. Whether you're using public URLs, embedding image data directly, or just adding a static logo, mastering these techniques will elevate the quality and impact of your work.

Working through methods like encoding binary data in Power Query highlights how traditional BI tools, while powerful, often demand a steep learning curve and hours of setup for what feels like a simple task. At our company, we believe getting insights shouldn't require you to become a data engineer. We built Graphed because we wanted to create a world where building a marketing or sales dashboard is as easy as just describing what you want to see in plain English. For teams focused on growth, moving at the speed of conversation is a game-changer.