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Personalize visuals in a report

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APPLIES TO: Power BI service for business users Power BI service for designers & developers Power BI Desktop Requires Pro or Premium license

It's hard to make one visual that satisfies everyone's requirements. But, when a colleague shares a report with you, you might want to make changes to the visuals—without having to ask your colleague to make the changes for you.

Maybe you'd like to swap what's on the axis, change the visual type, or add something to the tooltip. With the Personalize this visual feature, make the changes yourself and when you have the visual the way you want it, save it as a bookmark to come back to. You don't even need edit permission for the report.

Screenshot of a report visual with the Personalize menu highlighted.

What you can change

This feature helps you gain further insights through ad-hoc exploration of visuals on a Power BI report. The following are some of the modifications that you can make. The available options vary by visual type.

  • Change the visualization type.
  • Swap out a measure or dimension.
  • Add or remove a legend.
  • Compare two or more measures.
  • Change aggregations, and more.

Not only does this feature allow for new exploration capabilities, it also includes ways for you to capture and share your changes:

  • Capture your changes.
  • Share your changes.
  • Reset all your changes for a report.
  • Reset all your changes for a visual.
  • Clear out your recent changes.

Important

The ability to personalize a visual must be enabled by the report designer. If you don't see the Personalize this visual icon, then the report designer didn't enable this feature for the current report. Check with the report owner or your Power BI administrator to have the feature enabled. To display contact information for the report owner, select the name of the report from the Power BI menu bar.

Personalize visuals in the Power BI service

By personalizing a visual, you can explore your data in many ways, without leaving report reading view. The following examples show different ways you can modify a visualization to meet your needs.

  1. Open a report in reading view in the Power BI service.

  2. In the menu bar for the visual, select the Personalize this visual icon.

Change the visualization type

Do you think the data would display better as a Stacked column chart? Change the Visualization type.

Screenshot of the Personalize window with the Visualization type option expanded.

Swap out a measure or dimension

Replace the field being used for the X axis or Y axis by selecting the field that you want to replace, then selecting a different field.

Screenshot of the Personalize window with the X-axis option expanded.

Add or remove a legend

By adding a legend, you can color-code a visual based on a category. In this example, we're color-coding based on company name.

Screenshot of the Personalize window with the Legend option expanded.

Change the placement of fields

By using drag and drop, you can change the placement of fields within the same visual property or even across different visual properties. For example, you can quickly move a field in the legend to the axis of a visual.

Screenshot of the Personalize pane with the axis option highlighted.

You can also quickly reorder the columns of a table or matrix.

Screenshot of a table with a set of values in the Personalize pane highlighted.

Compare two or more different measures

Compare and contrast values for different measures by using the + icon to add multiple measures for a visual. To remove a measure, select More options (...) and choose Remove field.

Screenshot of a report visual that shows the connection between the report legend and values in the Personalize pane.

Change aggregations

Change how a measure is computed by changing the aggregation in the Personalize pane. Select More options (...) and choose the aggregation to use.

Screenshot of a report visual with some aggregation values highlighted.

Capture changes

Using personal bookmarks, capture your changes so you can return to your personalized view. Select Bookmarks > Personal bookmarks and give the bookmark a name.

Screenshot of the Personal bookmarks dialog with the option to make this the default view selected.

You can also make the bookmark your default view.

Share changes

If you've read and re-share permissions, when you share the report you can choose to include your changes. This personalized version does not overwrite the author's version. The colleague who is viewing your personalized report can select Reset to default and return to the author's version of the report. If the colleague has editing permissions, they can save your personalized version as a new report.

Screenshot of the Send link dialog with the option to include changes selected.

Reset all your changes to a report

From the upper-right corner of your report canvas, select Reset to default. This removes all your changes in the report and sets it back to the author's last saved view of the report.

Screenshot of the reset icon on the report canvas.

Reset all your changes to a visual

From the menu bar for the visual, select Reset this visual to remove all your changes to a particular visual and set it back to the author's last saved view of that visual.

Screenshot of the visual menu bar with the reset icon highlighted.

Clear recent changes

Select the eraser icon to clear all changes since you opened the Personalize pane.

Screenshot of the Personalize pane with the eraser icon highlighted.

Considerations and limitations

Currently the feature has a few limitations to be aware of.

  • Personalize this visual can be turned off for an entire report or for a particular visual. If you don't have an option to personalize a visual, check with your Power BI admin or the report owner. To display contact information for the report owner, select the name of the report from the Power BI menu bar.
  • User explorations don't automatically persist. You need to save your view as a personal bookmark to capture your changes.
  • This feature is supported in the Power BI mobile apps for iOS and Android tablets and in the Power BI Windows app; it isn't supported in the Power BI mobile apps for phones. However, any change to a visual you save in a personal bookmark while in the Power BI service is respected in all the Power BI mobile apps.

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