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Better data label customization

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Daniel on 25 May 2016 04:06:06

When data labels are enabled on visualization types where data overlaps (such as clustered bar charts and line charts), there are occasions where data labels do not display, or it is difficult to tell which label corresponds to which bar/line. There should be better customization options for Data Labels, which would ease comprehension of various visualizations. In particular, for the varied types of bar charts:

- Label location: start of bar, middle of bar, end of bar, end of chart
- Label/Background colour matching: change the label's text or background to match the bar to which it corresponds
- Label Stacking? If a label would overlap with another, display both of them slightly offset, instead of only displaying one label.

Comments (59)
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Power BI Ideas Admin on 05 Jul 2020 22:57:26

RE: Better data label customization

Yes, please. And for line charts it should be possible to label only the last data point per line (outside the end of each line), and to pull those data label values from the values we would otherwise place in the legend.

This type of labeling is so much easier to read than separate legends for line charts. However, when multiple lines end up in the same spot, some stacking/jittering or reverting to a legend is needed.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 22:55:34

RE: Better data label customization

control over which elements get data labels. eg. ON for Line Values and OFF for Column values.

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Shelley on 05 Jul 2020 22:52:29

RE: Better data label customization

Also allow different decimal granularity for different series. For example, on a combo chart, the line plot may be # of orders, where we do not want any decimal places (there are no fractions of an order), and then the bar series for average order value should have two decimal places for showing the cents for the order.

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Jonathan Schlereth on 05 Jul 2020 22:47:23

RE: Better data label customization

I have a clustered bar chart where the data bars go from left-to-right and I have a 2 level hierarchy plotted on the y axis. Everything shows as it should, but when I drill down into one category, the overall category name always appears first and "hides" the detail name. I'd either have to make the visualization really large to show the detail name or have the user "hover-over" the bar itself to see the name, but this is tedious at best.

I've even switched to the more "normal" bar chart where the bars are running from top-to-bottom and I've turned off "Concatenate labels" on the x-axis, but this doesn't change the visualization at all.

It would be nice to have control over this.

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Rodrigo Silva on 05 Jul 2020 22:47:17

RE: Better data label customization

It would be amazing if we could change data labels according to our needs

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Power BI Ideas Admin on 05 Jul 2020 22:42:33

RE: Better data label customization

Yes i would also need to control for which y-axis i want to show the data label

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Elder Carvalho on 05 Jul 2020 22:39:52

RE: Better data label customization

I would also add a option to control which data lable y-axis (column / line) i want to display, because sometimes it gets too polluted

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rlansing on 05 Jul 2020 22:29:31

RE: Better data label customization

I would add a label density option, to control the number of labels visible (ex. every 1, 2, 3 data points) to prioritize visual quality over accuracy.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 22:22:39

RE: Better data label customization

Facing the same problem. I am using line graph to represent my data. But when lines are too close, the graph don't display data label for one of the line