How to Present Power BI Dashboard in Full Screen

Presenting a Power BI dashboard effectively often means removing all distractions so your audience can focus entirely on the data. Going full screen is the best way to do this, turning your detailed report into a clean, professional, and immersive presentation. This guide will walk you through several methods to present your Power BI dashboards in full screen, from the simple built-in options to more advanced techniques for different scenarios.

Why a Full-Screen Presentation Matters

Before jumping into the "how," let's quickly touch on the "why." You've spent hours connecting data, building models, and designing visuals. The final step - presenting your work - is where you deliver the value. Presenting your dashboard in full-screen mode matters because it:

Eliminates Distractions: It hides your browser tabs, bookmarks, desktop icons, and other on-screen clutter. This forces your audience's attention onto the story your data is telling, not on your cluttered desktop.
Maximizes Screen Real Estate: It uses every pixel of the display, making charts, graphs, and KPIs larger and easier to read, especially on a large monitor, TV screen, or projector in a conference room.
Looks Professional: A clean, full-screen view conveys a sense of polish and preparedness. It shows that you’re in control and transforms a report from a simple web page into a serious business intelligence tool.

Imagine walking into a meeting with senior leadership. A full-screen, focused presentation builds confidence and ensures your insights land with maximum impact. A windowed screen filled with other tabs and notifications does the opposite.

Method 1: The Built-in Full-Screen Mode in Power BI Service

The easiest and most common way to present is directly from the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com). Power BI includes a built-in feature designed for exactly this purpose. The steps are slightly different for a Report versus a Dashboard.

For Power BI Reports

Reports are the multi-page canvases where you build your interactive visuals. They have more options for tailoring the viewing experience before you go full screen.

Open Your Report: Navigate to your workspace in the Power BI Service and open the report you want to present.
Adjust the View: In the top menu bar, click on the View dropdown. You will see a few options:
- Fit to page: This is the default. It scales the report page to fit entirely within your browser window, which can create letterboxing (white space) on the sides or top/bottom.
- Fit to width: This scales the report to fit the width of your browser, often requiring you to scroll vertically to see the entire page. It’s useful for long-form reports.
- Actual size: This displays a 1:1 view of your report canvas. If the canvas is larger than your screen, you’ll need to scroll.

For most presentations, Fit to page gives the cleanest look.

Enter Full-Screen Mode: After setting your preferred view, look to the far right of the top menu bar. You'll see an icon of a screen with two diagonal arrows pointing outwards. Click this Full screen icon.

Your report will now fill the entire screen, with only the report content and page navigation controls at the bottom visible. To navigate between pages, just use the arrows at the bottom of the screen. To exit, press the Esc key on your keyboard or find the "Exit full screen" icon.

Pro Tip: For a completely clean view, first use the Power BI full-screen button, and then press the F11 key on your keyboard. This will hide the browser's address bar and tabs for a true edge-to-edge presentation.

For Power BI Dashboards

Dashboards are single-page views that pin key visuals from one or more reports. Their full-screen process is even simpler.

Open Your Dashboard: Navigate to and open the dashboard you want to display.
Go Full Screen: In the top-right corner of the menu bar, click the Full screen mode icon.

The dashboard will immediately expand to fill the screen. Since dashboards are single-page layouts, there are no page navigation controls. To exit, just press the Esc key.

Method 2: Publishing to Web for Public Sharing

What if you need to share your report with a wide audience that doesn't have a Power BI account, or you want to embed a full-screen view on a public website? This is where the "Publish to web" feature comes in. But it comes with a major security warning.

Important Security Consideration

When you use "Publish to web," the report and its underlying data become public. Anyone on the internet with the link can view it, no authentication is required. You should never use this feature for confidential or proprietary company data, such as financial reports, sales figures, or customer lists.

How to Use Publish to Web

For data that is appropriate for public consumption (e.g., public data analysis, a portfolio piece on a personal blog), here's how to do it:

Open the Report: In the Power BI Service, open the report.
Generate the Public Code: Go to File > Embed report > Publish to web (public).
Confirm the Warning: A dialog box will appear, warning you about making your data public. Read it carefully and click Create embed code, then Publish.
Get the Link: Power BI will provide a public link. You can open this link in any browser. It will load a lean version of your report. By default, there's a footer from Microsoft, but you can press the full-screen icon at the bottom-right of the screen and share this view completely unencumbered by chrome or additional user interfaces. Just be mindful of the public access implications.

Method 3: Presenting Directly from Power BI Desktop

Sometimes you might need to present your report directly from your laptop without a reliable internet connection. Power BI Desktop doesn't have a formal presentation mode like the Service, but you can create a clean, full-screen look with a few clever tricks.

Steps for a Clean Desktop Presentation:

Collapse All Panes: To get a clean canvas, you need to hide the interface elements. On the right side of the screen, you will see the Filters, Visualizations, and Fields panes. Click the small arrow icon on each one to collapse them. This instantly declutters your view.
Maximize the Window: Simply click the maximize button on the Power BI Desktop application window to make it fill your screen. While it won't hide the top ribbon menu or taskbar, it removes most clutter.
Use Focus Mode for Individual Visuals: This is a powerful feature for storytelling. Hover over any visual (a chart, graph, map, or table) in your report. In the top-right corner of that visual, you'll see a small icon that looks like a maximized box. This is Focus mode. Clicking it will expand that single visual to fill the entire report canvas. This is perfect for when you want to dive deep into one specific chart and have a detailed conversation about it before returning to the main dashboard view. To return, click the Back to report button.

By collapsing all the side panes and using a combination of maximizing the window and leveraging Focus Mode, you can deliver a very effective presentation directly from the Desktop application.

Advanced Option: Power BI Embedded

For organizations that need to present data within their own custom applications or customer portals securely, Power BI Embedded is the answer. This is a more technical solution that requires developer involvement, but it provides the most seamless experience.

Instead of sending users to the Power BI website, you embed the report directly into your application's user interface. This gives you complete control over the layout, allowing you to create a naturally full-screen experience that matches your brand. Most importantly, it's secure. You can use row-level security to ensure users only see the data they are permitted to access. This is the go-to solution for SaaS companies and others showing customers their data and an excellent option for large internal company dashboards.

Tips for a Flawless Presentation

Getting your dashboard into full-screen mode is only half the battle. Here are a few final tips to make your presentation a success:

Design for a 16:9 Aspect Ratio: Most modern screens (laptops, TVs, projectors) use a 16:9 aspect ratio. When creating your report in Power BI Desktop, go to the Format page settings for the report, and under Canvas settings, set the Type to 16:9. This prevents unattractive black bars or unnecessary scrolling during your full-screen presentation.
Tell a Story with Bookmarks: Use Power BI's Bookmarks feature to create a guided narrative. A bookmark can save a specific state of your report page - including filters, drill-downs, and visibility of objects. You can create a series of bookmarks and click through them like PowerPoint slides, smoothly telling a story without having to manually click a bunch of filters live.
Optimize for Performance: Nothing kills your momentum more than a report that’s slow to load or respond to clicks. Keep your data model lean, limit the number of visuals on a single page, and write efficient DAX formulas to ensure your presentation is snappy and responsive.
Practice Your Navigation: Before you stand in front of an audience, do a dry run. Are you comfortable switching between pages? Do you know which visuals have drill-down capabilities? Being fluid with the tool builds credibility and keeps your audience engaged.

Final Thoughts

Displaying your Power BI dashboard in full screen is a simple but powerful step toward delivering clear and impactful data insights. Whether you're using the built-in mode in the Power BI Service, leveraging Focus Mode in Desktop, or publishing a public version, eliminating distractions ensures your data story takes center stage. Choosing the right method depends on your audience, your data's sensitivity, and your presentation environment.

While Power BI is a dominant force for heavy-duty business intelligence, we also know that an enormous number of marketing and sales reporting needs are far more lightweight — a reality for teams that want rapid answers and dashboards but without Power BI's huge learning curve. That’s precisely why we built Graphed. We wanted to make creating marketing and sales reports as simple as just asking for what you want, like, “show me our monthly revenue by campaign from Google Ads versus Facebook Ads.” Graphed connects to your live data sources and builds real-time dashboards for you, all from a simple conversation so a CEO, stakeholder, or a brand new marketing team hire can build out the perfect full-screen reporting experience, no training required!