Power BI Report Titling - Snack 18

It feels like the only thing really missing from this little report is perhaps some sort of title.

Let's add one!

1) Jump into EDIT mode on the report.

2) Click "Text Box" at the top of the screen.

A box appears with an accompanying Format Box.  If you have any experience at all with Microsoft Word, you already know what to do here.

3) Give the report a title by typing into that text box.

4) Choose whatever formatting options make you happy.

Simple, right?

However, suppose for a moment that you or the person(s) accessing the report would like a date on the report that reflects whatever year, month or day is selected.

That little Format Box is more powerful than you realize.

5) In that Format Box, click "Value."

The format box expands so that you can "Create a dynamic value that updates with your data."

This is where you really to know your data and how you might query it to answer the first question in that box, "How would you calculate this value."

It also helps to know how Power BI wants you to ask this question.  Sometimes, you have to play around with the word order to get it to do what you want.  I already did that for you here.

6) Type in that box "Latest Date Financials"

7) An option displaying the very same thing you type should appear below that.   Choose it!

Just below that, where says "Results," you should see "12/1/2014"

Beneath that is a drop-down to choose how to display that result and other associated formatting options.

Finally, the box at the bottom enables naming the value.  This is handy if you have a lot of different values driving that title and/or description and need to keep them all straight.  You can literally write an entire diagnosis in that text box, using nothing but defined values.

Let's leave that last one as #Value for now.

8) Click Save on the Formatting Box.

The date should appear in your text box.

You might need to format it to match any text you placed before that.

9) File

10) Save

Let's test it out.  Click on "Qtr 2" in the bar graph and the date just created should change to 6/1/2014.  If it did not, start over. 

Fun, huh?

You can also add many of the options that visualizations have to that text box. If you have it selected, what is normally the Visualizations Pane has become the Format Text Box Pane.  That is not the same formatting just covered; it is for the box itself.

That is all I got this week.  

While it feels like that is all that is left to do, we still got a few things to talk about, so look for another episode soon.