How to Change Display Units in Power BI

Power BI’s tendency to automatically shorten large numbers - turning 1,500,000 into 1.5M - is great for keeping dashboards tidy, but there are times when you need to see the full, exact number. Whether you're creating a detailed financial table or a specific KPI card, controlling this formatting is essential for clear reporting. This tutorial will walk you through several ways to change or remove these display units in Power BI so your numbers appear exactly how you want them to.

Why Power BI Abbreviates Numbers by Default

Before jumping into the "how," it helps to understand the "why." Power BI tries to be smart about presenting data. When you're dealing with values stretching into the millions or billions, displaying the full number like $1,234,567.89 on a small bar chart can make the axis labels cluttered and hard to read. To solve this, Power BI automatically scales the values to an appropriate unit: Thousands (K), Millions (M), Billions (B), and Trillions (T).

This auto-scaling is designed to improve readability at a glance. It's a useful feature for high-level dashboards where a general sense of scale is more important than specific digits. However, for financial statements, detailed sales reports, or any situation where precision is paramount, you'll want to override this default behavior.

Method 1: Using the Formatting Pane for a Single Visual

The quickest and most common way to change display units is directly formatting the specific visual you are working on. This method doesn't affect your underlying data or other visuals, making it perfect for one-off adjustments.

Let's use a Card visual and a Bar Chart as examples.

Changing Units on a Card Visual

Card visuals are often used for displaying key performance indicators (KPIs), and you might want to show the full number without any abbreviation.

Select the Card visual on your Power BI report canvas.
With the visual selected, navigate to the Format your visual pane on the right-hand side (it looks like a paintbrush icon).
Expand the Callout value section. This is where you format the main number on the card.
Look for the Display units dropdown menu. You’ll see that it's likely set to "Auto."
Click the dropdown and select None. The number on your card will immediately update to show its full, un-abbreviated value.

You can also use this dropdown to force a specific unit, like Thousands (K) or Millions (M), if you want to standardize your visuals.

Changing Units on a Chart Axis or Data Labels

For charts, you have granular control over different elements, including the Y-axis (for column charts), X-axis (for bar charts), and the data labels that appear on the chart itself.

Select the chart visual you want to edit.
Go to the Format your visual pane.
To change axis labels, expand the Y-axis section (or X-axis for horizontal bar charts). Inside that, expand the Values subsection.
You'll find the same Display units dropdown. Select None to show the full numbers on your axis.
To change the data labels, go back to the top of the formatting pane and expand the Data labels section. In the Values subsection here, you will find another Display units dropdown. Set this to None as well to see the full number right on the bars of your chart.

This method gives you precise control on a per-visual basis, which is great for tailoring different parts of your report for different audiences.

Method 2: Using DAX for Consistent, Report-Wide Formatting

Constantly changing the "Display units" for every new visual can become repetitive. If you know that a specific metric, such as 'Total Sales', should always be displayed as a full number across your entire report, you can use a DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) formula to create a pre-formatted measure.

The key function here is FORMAT. This function converts a number into a text string with a specific format that you define.

How to Create a Formatted Measure

In the Power BI Desktop, click on New measure from the Home or Modeling tab in the top ribbon.
The formula bar will appear. Here, you'll define your new measure. Let's say you have a 'Sales' table with a 'Revenue' column. The new measure formula would be:

Press Enter to create the measure.

Now, let’s break down that DAX formula:

Formatted Revenue = is the name of our new measure.
SUM(Sales[Revenue]) is the calculation we want to format.
"#,##0" is the format string. This tells Power BI to display the number with a comma as a thousands separator and show the full integer. The "0" ensures that a zero is displayed if the value is zero, and the "#" is a placeholder for digits.

You can now drag "Formatted Revenue" into your visuals instead of the original 'Revenue' field. Any card, table, or chart using this measure will display the full number automatically, with no need to adjust settings in the formatting pane.

Other Useful Format Strings:

Currency without decimal places: FORMAT(SUM(Sales[Revenue]), "$#,##0")
Currency with two decimal places: FORMAT(SUM(Sales[Revenue]), "$#,##0.00")
Force Thousands ('K') explicitly: FORMAT(SUM(Sales[Revenue]), "$#,##0,K")

Important Warning: FORMAT Converts Numbers to Text

There's a critical trade-off when using the FORMAT function: it converts your numeric value into a text string. This has a major consequence: you can no longer use this measure for further mathematical calculations within a visual. For instance, Power BI can't sum or average your "Formatted Revenue" measure because it sees "1,234,567" as text, not a number.

This is why the calculation (e.g., SUM, AVERAGE, MAX) has to be placed inside the FORMAT function itself. Create these formatted measures for display purposes only, and keep your original numeric fields in your data model handy for any underlying calculations.

Method 3: Setting Default Formatting in the Model View

A third option offers a middle-ground solution. It lets you set a default format for a column or measure without converting it to text. This format will be automatically applied every time you use the field in a new visual, but you can still override it using the formatting pane if you need to.

In Power BI Desktop, navigate to the Model view on the left side menu.
On the right, in the Data pane, find and select the measure or column you want to format (e.g., your 'Revenue' field).
Once selected, the Properties pane below it will become active. Find the Formatting section.
Here you can specify the format. For thousands separators, you can simply toggle on the Thousands separator option. This will make full numbers more readable by adding commas where appropriate when display units are set to "None".
You can also define a specific format, such as setting the data type to Currency and defining the number of decimal places.

This method is excellent practice for maintaining a clean data model. It sets a sensible default that helps with consistency but gives you the flexibility to make visual-specific adjustments later.

Choosing the Right Method for Your Needs

With three different ways to approach this, which one should you choose?

Use the Visual Formatting Pane (Method 1) when you need a quick, one-off change for a single visual and want to leave the default behavior intact everywhere else.
Use a DAX FORMAT Measure (Method 2) when you want 100% control and require a metric to always display in a specific text format, report-wide, with no exceptions. Best for a finished, finalized representation of a number.
Use the Model View Formatting (Method 3) to set a clean, good-practice default for your main numeric and currency fields. It promotes consistency but doesn’t remove flexibility for individual visuals. This is often the best all-around strategy.

Final Thoughts

Controlling how numbers are displayed is a small but essential part of creating clear, professional Power BI reports. By understanding the options in the formatting pane, using DAX measures, and setting defaults in the model, you can ensure your data is always presented with the right level of precision for your audience.

Our goal in analytics is to turn complicated data into clear answers, and sometimes formatting tweaks in tools like Power BI are just one more step in that process. We believe getting to those answers shouldn't require clicking through dozens of formatting menus. Instead of building visuals and then adjusting them piece by piece, we wanted people to simply describe what they need - like "show me total revenue and purchases by campaign as a table, and make sure all numbers are shown in full" - and have it created instantly. That’s why we built Graphed, to automate the manual report-building process so you can stay focused on what the data actually means.