Label Spacing Fail (and Fix!) on Bar Charts
If you’ve seen the other Label Spacing Fail post (on Line Charts), you know that despite Power BI being really powerful, it’s still not great at certain things, including knowing when to adjust charts a bit when there are data labels to have them fit properly.
It’s a problem that Bar Charts had until recently (and your version of Power BI may still have it), so let’s learn about it and how to deal with it.
We’re going to use a simple Power BI file to get to know this fail. If you’d like to use the same file, you can download it here:
If you’d like to the data source file this .pbix file connects to (and then switch the data source so it connects with the Excel file on your computer), you can download it here:
Video:
Written Post:
We’re starting off with a simple report that just has a Bar Chart built, and we’re going to explore how our label placement works, and if Power BI creates enough room for your labels (and how to fix it if it doesn’t)
I’m using the June 2024 version of Power BI for this post (and the video above), but I’ve been using Power BI since 2018 and have become so used to a label placement limitation it has had with bar charts (and designed around it), I didn’t even notice they had fixed it (and they didn’t announce it - yes, there’s an entire Power BI blog filled with news about changes to Power BI).
Microsoft does allow for older versions of Power BI Desktop to be downloaded, and I attempted to install an old version to show you how it used to not provide enough room for labels… but older versions are currently only available for 2024 versions (and I checked all those), so it looks like they fixed this in late 2023.
Okay, let’s get to what I’m talking about.
Our Bar Chart, by default, has “automatic” data label positioning (when you turn data labels on), where Power BI sticks your labels where it thinks they’ll fit best:
You’ll usually see something like the above screenshot when 1 bar (or a few) is a bunch higher than the rest. Power BI decides to put that data label IN the end of the bar.
This is all fine, and I’m glad it’s smart enough to change the label color for that one label so that it shows up better against the bar color (blue, in this case).
However, you may want ALL your bar labels to have consistent placement, so you go into your Position options in the Data Label formatting and switch the position from “Auto” to “Outside End”, for instance.
This is what you’ll see if you have a 2024 version of Power BI desktop:
But if you have an older version of Power BI Desktop, you may find that it does NOT give that label enough space, and in fact OVERLAPS your bar chart label over TOP of the end of your bar (like, half the number will be over the bar and the other half sticking out the side).
Here’s what you may be seeing:
That “214” for the top bar looks HORRIBLE… Power BI is not expanding the chart a bit to properly give that label more room and for years and years Microsoft just ignored it.
(I like to think that me complaining about it to them for a few years helped convince them to fix it… haha)
There are TWO ways of fixing this issue if you have an older version of Power BI Desktop. One’s a quick temporary fix and the other is more permanent.
The quick temporary fix is to adjust the MAX value on your X-Axis to a value significantly above your highest value to give your labels adequate space.
The more permanent fix is to update your version of Power BI Desktop, if you can (I realize that sometimes you need to deal with an IT department to get these things done… ask them).
If you go this route, you can save yourself work in the future by downloading Power BI Desktop from the Microsoft store. If you do it that way, your version will update *automatically* every time Microsoft rolls out an update (which they do most months).
Let me know in the comments below if you have questions about label spacing and I’ll help you figure it out!
Take care everyone,
Joe.
Post Tags: Bar Charts | Labels | Fails | See all tags
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This post was made with the June 2024 version of Power BI Desktop.