How to Change Title in Power BI

Changing the title of a chart or report page in Power BI seems simple, but it’s a fundamental skill for creating reports that are clear, professional, and easy for your audience to understand. This guide will walk you through exactly how to change titles on visuals, pages, and dashboards, and even show you how to make your titles dynamic so they update automatically based on user selections.

Understanding the Different Types of Titles in Power BI

Before changing a title, it's helpful to know which one you're working with. Power BI has several types of titles, each serving a different purpose within your report or dashboard.

• Visual Title: This is the title that appears directly above an individual chart, graph, table, or card on your report page. It's the most common title you'll edit.
• Page Title: This refers to the name of the report tab, visible at the bottom of the canvas in Power BI Desktop or on the left-hand navigation pane in the Power BI Service. It helps users navigate between different sections of your report.
• Dashboard Title: A dashboard is a single-page view in the Power BI Service, often combining visuals from multiple reports. The dashboard title is the main headline for this entire view.
• Text Box: While not an official "title," a Text Box is often used to create custom main titles, section headers, or add descriptive subtitles that the standard visual title options don't support.

Knowing the distinction helps you quickly find the right place to make your edits and keep your reports well-organized.

How to Change a Visual Title (The Easy Way)

The most frequent change you'll make is updating the title of a specific chart or table. A good title tells your audience exactly what they are looking at without any guesswork. For example, changing a generic title like "Sum of Sales Amount by Category" to a cleaner "Sales by Product Category" instantly improves readability.

Follow these steps to change a static visual title:

1. Select the Visual: First, click on the chart, graph, or matrix whose title you want to change. A bounding box with handles will appear around it, indicating it's active.

2. Open the Formatting Pane: With the visual selected, look to the right side of your screen for the Visualizations pane. Click on the icon that looks like a paint brush on a chart, which is the Format your visual tab.

3. Locate the Title Settings: In the Format pane, switch from the "Visual" tab to the "General" tab at the top. You will see a list of formatting options. Look for the one labeled Title and click the arrow next to it to expand its settings.

4. Edit the Title Text: Inside the expanded Title section, you'll see a text box under the "Text" field. This is where you can type your new custom title. As you type, the title on your visual will update in real-time. Make sure the toggle next to "Title" is switched to "On." If it’s off, your title won't appear, regardless of what you type.

Customizing Your Visual Title's Appearance

Power BI gives you detailed control over how your title looks. In the same "Title" section of the formatting pane, you’ll find several options to style your title:

• Heading: You can apply a specific heading style (H1, H2, etc.), which is helpful for accessibility and maintaining a consistent design hierarchy.
• Font: Choose from a wide range of fonts, change the font size, and apply formatting like Bold, Italic, or <u>Underline</u>.
• Text color: Change the color of your title's text to match your company branding or create visual contrast.
• Background color: Add a colored background specifically behind the title to make it stand out from the rest of the visual.
• Horizontal alignment: Align your title to the left, center, or right of the visual. For long report titles, center alignment often looks best.
• Text wrapping: If your title is too long to fit on one line, enabling this option will allow it to wrap onto a second line instead of being cut off.
• Subtitle: You can even add a subtitle for more context, which can be formatted independently.
• Divider: Add a line below your title to visually separate it from the chart area.

How to Create Dynamic Visual Titles with DAX

What if you want your title to change based on a user's filter selection? For example, showing "Total Sales for 2023" when a user filters by that year. This is called a dynamic title, and it makes your reports feel much more interactive and user-friendly. You can create one using a simple DAX measure.

Let's walk through an example to create a title that updates based on the region selected in a slicer.

Step 1: Create a DAX Measure for the Title

First, we need to write a little bit of DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) to capture the user's selection.

1. Navigate to the Model view or Report view in Power BI Desktop.
2. On the "Home" ribbon, click New Measure.
3. This will open the formula bar. Here, you'll write a formula that checks which region is selected.
4. Enter the following DAX formula and press Enter:

Dynamic Region Title = "Sales Performance for " & SELECTEDVALUE('Sales'[Region], "All Regions")

What this formula does:

• Dynamic Region Title = gives our new measure a name.
• "Sales Performance for " is a static piece of text that will always appear at the beginning of the title. The space at the end is important!
• The & symbol joins the text string with the output of our function.
• SELECTEDVALUE('Sales'[Region], "All Regions") is the key function here. It checks the 'Region' column in the 'Sales' table.

Step 2: Connect the DAX Measure to Your Visual Title

Now that you have your DAX measure, you need to tell your visual to use it as its title.

1. Click on the visual you want to have a dynamic title.
2. Open the Format your visual pane again and go to General > Title.
3. Instead of typing in the "Text" box, look for the small fx button to the right of it. This is the "Conditional formatting" button. Click it.
4. A new window will pop up. In this window:
5. Click OK.

That's it! Now, the title of your visual is linked to that measure. When you interact with the 'Region' slicer on your report page, the title will automatically update to reflect your selection. If you select "South," the title will change to "Sales Performance for South." If you clear the filter, it will revert to "Sales Performance for All Regions."

How to Change a Report Page Title

Renaming the tabs in your report is essential for good navigation. Giving your pages clear, descriptive names like "Sales Summary," "Customer Details," or "Inventory Levels" helps users know exactly where to click to find the information they need.

There are two quick ways to do this:

Method 1: Double-Click

1. Find the page tabs at the bottom of your Power BI Desktop window.
2. Double-click on the tab name you wish to change.
3. The name will become editable. Type your new name and press Enter.

Method 2: Right-Click

1. Right-click on the page tab you want to edit.
2. A context menu will appear. Select Rename Page.
3. The name becomes editable. Type the new name and press Enter.

A quick tip: Keep page names short and sweet so they don't get cut off on smaller screens.

How to Change a Dashboard Title in the Power BI Service

Once you publish your report to the Power BI Service, you might pin visuals to a dashboard. Changing the title of a dashboard is just as simple as changing a page title, but it happens online in the service, not in Power BI Desktop.

1. Log in to your Power BI account at app.powerbi.com.
2. Navigate to the workspace where your dashboard is located.
3. You can either:

Final Thoughts

Mastering how to change titles across visuals, pages, and dashboards is a small but powerful skill that greatly improves the clarity and professionalism of your Power BI reports. By using clear static titles and leveraging dynamic titles with DAX, you can create a more intuitive and responsive experience for anyone interacting with your data.

Building polished and insightful reports shouldn't feel like a manual chore. At our company, we've designed Graphed to streamline this entire process. Instead of clicking through formatting panes for every single chart, you can simply ask for what you need in plain English - like "Create a sales dashboard showing revenue by region and product category line charts for this year." Graphed instantly builds a full, real-time dashboard for you, taking care of all the naming conventions, connections, and visualizations automatically so you can focus on the insights, not the setup.