How to Write Text in Power BI

Adding clear text descriptions to your Power BI reports is the difference between a confusing chart and a compelling data story. It provides context, guides your audience's attention, and makes your key findings impossible to miss. This article will walk you through the primary methods for adding and formatting text in Power BI, from simple titles to dynamic, data-driven insights.

Why Text is Essential in a Visual Tool like Power BI

While Power BI shines at turning numbers into compelling visuals, text plays a crucial supporting role. Without it, your audience is left guessing. Properly used, text transforms your dashboards from a collection of charts into a clear, actionable report.

Here’s what text helps you accomplish:

• Give Context with Titles: A clear title like "Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) - Last 6 Months" immediately tells the viewer what they are looking at.
• Provide Explanations: A quick note - "Data updated daily at 6 AM EST" - manages expectations and builds trust in the report's accuracy.
• Highlight Key Numbers: Bolding a key performance indicator (KPI) in a sentence - "Our Conversion Rate increased by 15% this quarter" - draws immediate attention.
• Tell a Data Story: Use text to connect the dots between visuals, guiding the user through your analysis and toward the main conclusion you want to convey.

Let's get into the practical ways to add and control these text elements.

The Go-To Method: Using Text Boxes for Static Information

The simplest and most common way to add text is with a Text Box. This is perfect for report titles, section headers, explanatory notes, or any other information that doesn't need to change based on the data.

How to Add and Format a Text Box

Adding a text box takes just two clicks.

1. Navigate to the Insert tab on the Power BI ribbon at the top of your screen.
2. Click on Text Box. A new text box will appear on your report canvas.

You can now type directly into this box. Once you've added your text, you'll want to style it. All formatting options are found in the Format pane that appears on the right whenever you select the text box.

Inside the formatting pane, you’ll find several options:

• Font: Choose your font family, size, and color. You can also apply bold, italic, or underline styles.
• Alignment: Align text horizontally (left, center, right) and vertically (top, middle, bottom).
• Bulleted or Numbered Lists: Create lists to make your text easier to scan.
• Hyperlinks: To add a link, highlight the text you want to use as your anchor and click the link icon. This is useful for linking to external resources or even other pages within your Power BI report.

You can also format the box itself. Under the main "Format" section in the pane, switch from "Text box" to "General" to find settings for:

• Title: Add a formal title to the text box container.
• Effects: Set a background color for the text box, add a border, or apply a drop shadow to make it stand out from the page.

Practical Example: A text box is the perfect tool for a report header. You might create one that says "Q3 Marketing Performance Review" and format it with a large, bold font. Below that, in a smaller text box, you could add: "Data sources: Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Shopify."

Creating Dynamic Headlines and KPIs with the Card Visual

What if you want your title to automatically update when your data refreshes? For example, a title like "Sales Performance for October 2023" will become outdated in a month. This is where you can cleverly use the Card visual combined with a bit of DAX (Data Analysis Expressions).

What's a DAX Measure?

DAX is Power BI’s formula language. Don't let that intimidate you. You can start with very simple formulas to create powerful dynamic text.

How to Create a Dynamic Title

Let's create a title that shows the latest month and year in your dataset.

Step 1: Create a New Measure

First, we need to create a DAX measure that will generate our text string. In the Home tab, click New Measure. This opens the formula bar at the top of the screen.

Step 2: Write the DAX Formula

In the formula bar, paste the following DAX formula. Replace 'Sales'[Date] with the actual name of your table and date column.

Latest Month Title = "Sales Performance for " & FORMAT(MAX('Sales'[Date]), "MMMM YYYY")

Let's quickly break this down:

• "Sales Performance for " is the static text part of our title. The ampersand (&) is used to join it with the dynamic part.
• MAX('Sales'[Date]) finds the most recent date in your 'Sales' table.
• FORMAT(..., "MMMM YYYY") takes that date and formats it to show the full month name and the four-digit year (e.g., "October 2023").

Press Enter to save the measure. You will now see it in your "Data" pane on the right side of the screen.

Step 3: Add and Configure the Card Visual

Now, add a Card visual to your report. You can find it in the Visualizations pane.

1. Click on the Card visual icon (it usually looks like "123").
2. With the new, empty Card selected on your canvas, find your Latest Month Title measure in the Data pane and drag it into the "Fields" area for the visual.

Your dynamic title now appears! It will likely need some formatting to look like a title. Select the card and go to the Format your visual pane:

1. Under "Visual," expand Callout value. Here you can adjust the font, size, and color to make it look like a header.
2. Expand Category label and turn it off. This removes the minor text description underneath your headline.
3. If you want the title to blend seamlessly into your background, go to the "General" tab in the formatting pane, expand Effects, and set the Background to "Off."

That's it! Now, every time your dataset is refreshed with new data, this title will update automatically, saving you from having to manually change it each month.

Adding and Customizing Text Within Visualizations

You can also control text elements baked directly into your charts and graphs. These settings let you customize everything from axis labels to the numbers appearing on a bar chart.

To access these options, simply select any visual on your report page, and a set of formatting menus will appear in the Format your visual pane.

Visual Titles

Every visual should have a clear title. In the Format pane, go to the General tab and expand the Title menu. Here you can:

• Write your own title text.
• Change the font, text color, background color, and alignment.
• Add a subtitle for more detail.

Pro Tip: Similar to the card visual, you can make the visual title dynamic! Click the small fx button next to the Title text input. This allows you to select a DAX measure (like the one we created earlier) to power the title.

Data Labels and Axis Labels

Under the Visual tab in the format pane, you can find options for nearly all the text on the chart itself.

• X-Axis and Y-Axis: Here you can change the font, size, and color of the axis labels for clarity. You can also edit or remove the axis title (e.g., changing 'sumofsales' to just "Sales").
• Data Labels: Turn these on to display the exact value on top of (or inside) each element of your chart, such as each bar in a bar chart. You can heavily customize the appearance of these labels to ensure they are readable without cluttering the visual.
• Legend: If your chart has a legend, you can customize its position, title, and the font style of the text.

Best Practices for Using Text in Your Reports

Having the tools is one thing, using them effectively is another. Follow these simple guidelines to make your reports clear, professional, and easy to understand.

• Be Brief: Dashboards are meant to be quick reads. Use concise labels, titles, and explanations. If more detail is needed, consider adding a tooltip or a separate "details" page.
• Stay Consistent: Use a consistent font family, size, and color scheme across your entire report. Your main title should be the biggest, section titles smaller, and body text smallest. Consistency creates a polished, professional look. Using Power BI's built-in themes can help with this.
• Focus on Readability: Ensure your text has enough contrast with its background. Dark grey text on a white background is often easier to read for long periods than pure black text. Avoid using busy background images behind text.
• Strategically Align Your Elements: Use the alignment tools to make sure your text boxes and visuals are perfectly aligned. Navigate to the View tab and enable Show gridlines and Snap to grid to make alignment much easier. A tidy layout makes your information seem more credible.
• Use Text to Support, Not Repeat: The purpose of text is to add context that isn't immediately obvious from the visual. Your chart title should describe what the data is, and any associated text should explain why it matters. Don't just write "The bar chart shows sales are going up." Instead, write "Sales grew 30% month-over-month following the launch of Campaign X."

Final Thoughts

Mastering text in Power BI is a fundamental skill for moving beyond basic charts to creating truly insightful and professional-grade reports. By using a combination of static Text Boxes, dynamic Cards powered by DAX, and thoughtful formatting within your visuals, you can provide the essential context your audience needs to understand your data and make informed decisions.

While mastering text and DAX formulas in Power BI gives you deep granular control, it also comes with a learning curve and multiple steps for each element. We experienced this friction firsthand, which is why we built Graphed. Our goal is to eliminate complexity so you can get answers instantly. Instead of building visuals, adding text boxes, and formatting them manually, you can just ask in plain English, "Show me a chart of sales by month for this year," and get a live, interactive visualization in seconds - no DAX or format panes required.