How to Add Header in Power BI Dashboard

Creating a Power BI dashboard can feel like a win, but then you realize something's missing: a clean, professional header. Unlike reports, dashboards don't have a built-in header or footer area, leaving many users wondering how to add branding, titles, and key context. This article will show you three effective methods to create a custom header for your Power BI dashboard, turning it from a simple canvas of visuals into a polished, professional report.

Why Does a Power BI Dashboard Header Matter?

Before jumping into the how-to, it’s worth understanding why a header is so valuable. It’s more than just decoration, a good header serves several important functions that improve the user experience and the overall effectiveness of your dashboard.

• Branding and Consistency: A header is the perfect place to add your company logo and apply brand colors. This builds trust and creates a seamless, professional experience, especially when sharing dashboards with clients or stakeholders outside your immediate team.
• Clear Context and Title: A dashboard without a clear title is like a book without a cover. A header immediately tells the viewer what they're looking at - Is it "Weekly Marketing Performance," "Q3 Sales Pipeline Analysis," or a "Financial Health Overview"? This context is essential for immediate understanding.
• Key Information at a Glance: Headers can house crucial, high-level information that users need right away. This can include the report's author, the date it was last refreshed, or top-line KPIs that everyone needs to see first.
• Navigation: An effective header can also act as simple navigation. You can hyperlink your logo to the company intranet or add links to underlying detailed reports, helping users dig deeper when needed.

In short, a manually created header elevates your dashboard from a collection of charts into a user-friendly, branded information hub.

The Core Challenge: Understanding Dashboards vs. Reports

The main reason this isn't a simple "click-to-add-header" feature is because of the fundamental difference between Power BI Reports and Dashboards.

Reports are multi-page, interactive canvases where you do the deep-dive analysis. They are built in Power BI Desktop and have dedicated header, footer, and page formatting options. You can add shapes, logos, and arrange visuals with pixel-perfect precision.

Dashboards, on the other hand, are single-page summaries built in the Power BI Service. Their goal is to provide a consolidated, at-a-glance view of your most important metrics. Dashboards are composed of "tiles," which are individual visuals pinned from one or more reports. This tile-based grid system is what makes adding a single, overarching header a creative challenge.

The good news is that we can use the dashboard’s tile system to our advantage. The following methods all involve strategically adding specific types of tiles and arranging them at the top to function as a seamless header.

Method 1: The Simple Header Using a Text Box Tile

This is the quickest and most straightforward way to add a title and subtitle to your dashboard. It uses a standard text box tile stretched across the top of the canvas.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Navigate to the dashboard you want to edit in the Power BI Service.
2. In the menu bar at the top, click on Edit. This will switch your dashboard into editing mode, allowing you to move and add tiles.
3. From the same menu bar, select Add a tile.
4. A pane will appear on the right side of your screen called "Add a tile." Choose Text box from the options and click Next.
5. You’ll now see the "Tile details" screen. In the Content section, type your header text. This is where you can enter the main title, like "Quarterly Sales Dashboard."
6. Use the basic formatting toolbar to make your title stand out. You can increase the font size (36pt or larger works well for a main title), make it bold, change the text color to match your brand, and center the alignment.
7. (Optional) You can add a hyperlink to your text. Highlight the text, click the link icon, and paste in a URL. This is useful for linking to a detailed source report or a company portal.
8. When you're happy with the formatting, click Apply. A new text box tile will appear on your dashboard.
9. Drag this new tile to the very top of your dashboard. Then, click and drag the bottom-right corner to resize it, stretching it horizontally to fill the full width of the dashboard grid. Make it just tall enough to cleanly display your text.

When to use this method:

This method is perfect when you just need a simple, clean text title. It takes less than a minute and is incredibly easy to update.

Method 2: A Branded Header Using an Image Tile

If you want to include your company logo or a custom-designed header graphic, the image tile method is the way to go. This allows for a much more polished and professional look.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Create Your Header Graphic: First, you need to design your header image. You can use any design tool you're comfortable with, such as Canva, Figma, Adobe Express, or even PowerPoint. Create a wide rectangular banner that includes your company logo, the dashboard title, and any other static elements you'd like. A good starting aspect ratio is around 16:2. Export the final image as a .JPG or .PNG file.
2. Host the Image Online: Power BI needs a direct public URL to display an image. You cannot upload an image file from your computer. You must host your exported header image online. Good options for this include:
3. Add the Image Tile: In your Power BI dashboard, click Edit > Add a tile.
4. From the pane on the right, select Image and click Next.
5. In the "Tile details" screen, paste your image's public URL into the URL field.
6. (Optional) Add a link in the "Functionality" section. This will make the entire header image clickable, which is a great way to link back to your company's homepage or intranet.
7. Click Apply.
8. Just like with the text box, your new image tile will appear on the dashboard. Drag it to the top and resize it to span the full width.

When to use this method:

Use this method when branding and visual design are important. It creates a highly professional and consistent look across all your company's dashboards.

Method 3: A Dynamic Header by Pinning Report Visuals

What if you want a header that includes more than just static text or images? This advanced method lets you create a header with live KPIs and other dynamic data points by building the header inside a Power BI Report and then pinning its individual components to your dashboard.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Build the Header in Power BI Desktop: Open an existing report or create a new one in Power BI Desktop. Add a new, blank page and name it something like "Dashboard Header Elements."
2. On this report page, create all the elements for your header. This could be any combination of:
3. Arrange all these visuals at the top of the report page exactly as you'd like them to appear in your dashboard header.
4. Publish and Pin: Publish the report to the Power BI Service. Once published, navigate to the report page containing your header elements.
5. You will now pin each element individually. Hover your mouse over one visual (e.g., the logo), and click the small "pin" icon that appears.
6. A "Pin to dashboard" dialog box will appear. Select your target dashboard (either an existing one or create a new one) and click Pin.
7. Repeat this process for every single element you created for your header: the logo image, the title text box, and each KPI card.
8. Arrange The Tiles on Your Dashboard: Now go to your dashboard. You will see all your newly pinned tiles waiting for you. Click Edit and carefully drag and resize each tile, positioning them at the very top of the dashboard. Recreate the layout you built in the report.

When to use this method:

This method is the most flexible and powerful. Use it when you need a header that contains live, automatically refreshing data points alongside your title and logo. Although it's more fiddly to align the tiles, the result is a truly dynamic and informative header.

Final Thoughts

While Power BI dashboards don't have a native header option, creating a custom one is entirely possible with a bit of creativity. By using a text tile for simple titles, an image tile for branding, or by pinning individual report visuals for dynamic data, you can build a polished, professional header that provides essential context and transforms the usability of your dashboards.

At times, all this manual alignment and setup in Power BI can feel like a detour from your main goal: getting quick answers from your data. If you’re looking to get straight to the insights without all the dashboard drudgery, tools like Graphed are changing the game. We created an experience where you just connect your sales and marketing platforms, and then create entire dashboards simply by describing what you want in plain English. No more dragging tiles or wrestling with formatting - just clear answers and real-time reports, in seconds.