How to Add Title to Power BI Dashboard

While Power BI reports have a dedicated space for a title, dashboards are a bit different, and adding a clear, professional-looking title isn't as straightforward as you'd think. This guide will walk you through the most effective methods to add a title to your dashboard, ensuring it's easy for your audience to understand at a glance.

Why Does a Dashboard Title Matter?

A Power BI dashboard serves as a high-level, single-page view of your most important metrics, often pulling visuals from multiple reports. Since it's meant for quick consumption, context is critical. A proper title immediately tells your viewers - whether they're executives, team members, or clients - what data they are looking at. It sets the stage, provides clarity, and gives your dashboard a finished, professional look.

The confusion often starts with the difference between a report and a dashboard. In Power BI Desktop, you build reports on pages, and each page can easily have a title added using a simple text box. However, dashboards are created in the Power BI Service by pinning visuals from one or more reports. They are a different kind of canvas that doesn't have a built-in "title" element. This means we have to create one using the tools available in the dashboard itself.

Let’s go through three effective methods to work around this limitation.

Method 1: The Quickest Way Using a Text Box

The simplest and most common method is to add a text box directly to the dashboard canvas. This gives you a dedicated tile you can use specifically for your title. It's fast, flexible, and gets the job done without much fuss.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Open Your Dashboard: Log in to the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com) and navigate to the dashboard where you want to add a title.

2. Enter Edit Mode: At the top of your dashboard, click the Edit button. The menu bar will expand with more options.

3. Add a New Tile: From the expanded menu, click + Add a tile.

4. Select "Text box": A pane will appear on the right side of the screen labeled "Add a tile." From the list of options, select Text box and click Next.

5. Configure Your Title: Now you'll see a "Tile details" section with a simple text editor. This is where you'll create your title.

   • In the content area, type out the title for your dashboard (e.g., "Quarterly Sales Performance").

   • Use the formatting toolbar to style your text. Make it look like a title by making it Bold, increasing the font size (e.g., to 24pt or 36pt), and changing the font color if desired.

   • For a clean look, use the alignment buttons to center the text.

6. Apply the Changes: Once you're happy with how the title looks, click the Apply button at the bottom of the pane.

7. Position and Resize the Title: The new title tile will appear at the bottom of your dashboard. Click and drag it to the top of your canvas, typically the top-left or top-center position. You can also resize the tile by dragging its corners to ensure all the text is visible and the tile spans the width of the dashboard for a banner-like effect.

This method is perfect for most users. It's intuitive, requires no special skills, and you can update the title anytime by entering Edit mode, clicking the three dots (...) on the tile, and selecting Edit details.

Method 2: Incorporate Branding with an Image Tile

Another great way to create a title is by using an image tile. This method is especially useful if you want to include your company logo or use branded fonts that aren't available in Power BI's text editor. With this approach, you create the title as an image first (using a tool like Canva, PowerPoint, or Adobe Express) and then upload it to your dashboard.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Create Your Title Image: First, design your title as an image. This could be your company logo next to the dashboard title text. Export this image as a .PNG or .JPG file and host it online. Your image needs a direct URL to be used in Power BI, so you can upload it to your company website, a SharePoint site, or a simple image hosting service like Imgur.

2. Enter Edit Mode and Add a Tile: Just like with the text box method, open your dashboard, click Edit, and then click + Add a tile.

3. Select "Image": In the "Add a tile" pane, select Image this time, and then click Next.

4. Configure the Image Tile: In the "Tile details" section, you’ll need to provide the image's information.

   • URL: Paste the direct link to your hosted image in this field. You should see a preview appear.

   • Functionality: Use the Set custom link option to make the image clickable. You could link it to your company's homepage, a SharePoint folder with underlying data, or the source report for the dashboard.

5. Apply and Position: Click Apply, and your image tile will be added to the dashboard. Drag it to a prominent position at the top and resize it to fit seamlessly with your other visuals.

This approach gives your dashboard a highly polished and professional appearance, maintaining brand consistency across all your reporting assets.

Method 3: Pin a Formatted Visual from a Report

This is a more advanced technique but offers maximum flexibility, especially if you want your title to be dynamic. The idea is to create the "title" inside a Power BI Desktop report and then pin that specific visual to your dashboard. This way, your title tile looks and feels exactly like the other visuals it shares a dashboard with.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Part 1: In Power BI Desktop

1. Open the Source Report: Launch Power BI Desktop and open one of the reports that your dashboard is based on. You can even create a new, dedicated tab in the report just for dashboard assets like a title.

2. Create a Measure for the Title (Optional, for Dynamic Text): If you want your title to update automatically (e.g., showing the current month), you can use DAX. Go to the Modeling tab and click New Measure.

   • For a simple, static title, you could use:

   • For a dynamic title that shows the latest date in your data, you might use something like:

3. Add a Card Visual: Drag a Card visual onto your report canvas. Then, drag your newly created measure into the "Fields" area of the visual.

4. Format the Card: This step is key. Select the card and go to the Format visual pane.

   • Under Callout value, adjust the font size, color, and style to look like a title.

   • Under Category label, toggle it off to hide the measure name.

   • Under General > Effects, turn off the Background or select a theme matching your dashboard's look. Consider turning off the border to make it seamless.

   Alternatively, if you don't need a dynamic title, you can simply insert a formatted Text Box directly onto the report canvas instead of using a card visual.

5. Publish the Report: Once your title visual is ready, save your work and click Publish to upload the changes to the Power BI Service.

Part 2: In the Power BI Service

1. Navigate to the Report: In the Power BI service, find the report you just published.

2. Pin the Visual: Hover over your new title visual (either the card or the text box). A small menu will appear. Click the pin icon (Pin visual).

3. Add to Your Dashboard: A dialog box will ask where you want to pin the visual. Select Existing dashboard and choose your target dashboard from the dropdown list. Click Pin.

4. Position It: Go to your dashboard, and you’ll find your new title tile at the bottom. Drag and position it at the top just like in the other methods.

This technique is fantastic because the title tile isn't just a separate element - it’s an integrated part of your Power BI ecosystem. Any changes made to the title in the source report will automatically flow through to the dashboard tiles linked to it.

Final Thoughts

While Power BI dashboards lack a built-in title feature, using a text box, an image, or a pinned visual are all excellent workarounds to add context and polish. Choosing the right method depends on your needs - whether you prioritize speed and simplicity or branding and dynamic capabilities.

We know that getting your reports and dashboards just right can involve a lot of these little tweaks and workarounds. At Graphed, we're building a world where you don’t need to be an expert in DAX or dashboard formatting to get the insights you need. Because our platform creates dashboards from simple, natural language prompts, you can just describe what you want to see - "Create a dashboard showing our Q3 sales performance broken down by region" - and we build the entire thing for you, complete with titles, an intelligent layout, and live data connections. All you need to do is connect your data sources through our one-click integrations, start a conversation, and get your perfect dashboard in seconds with Graphed.