Now that we have a visualization, let's do some simple formatting, starting with moving and resizing our visual:
- Click the mouse cursor anywhere inside the visual and drag the visual down to the lower-left corner of the canvas.
- Observe the sizing handles on the edges of the visual. Hover the mouse over the upper-right sizing handle and notice that the mouse cursor changes from the standard pointer to two arrows.
- Click this sizing handle and drag this handle either up and to the right or down and to the left. The direction you drag will depend on how big your visual is. The goal is to have a resized visual that takes up exactly one quarter of the screen. Drag your handle until you observe two red lines, one horizontal and one vertical, and then unclick. The red lines indicate when the canvas has been bisected. You should now have a resized visual that takes up exactly one quarter of the canvas.
Next, let's tackle that tiny print in our visualization. Power BI Desktop defaults to a rather small font size. Let's make this visual easier to read:
- Ensure that our first visualization is selected in the canvas. You know that the visualization is selected if it is outlined and the sizing handles are displayed.
Look at the Visualizations pane. Just under the palette of visualization icons, there are three icons: one that looks like cells in an Excel spreadsheet, a paint roller, and a magnifying glass. These are the Fields, Format, and Analytics sub-panes, as shown here:
Figure 9: Visualizations pane sub-panes for Fields, Format, and Analytics
Currently, there is a yellow line under the default Fields pane indicating that this is the currently selected sub-pane within the Visualizations pane.
- Select the Format icon and note that the yellow line now underlines the paint roller icon. Within this sub-pane are a number of expandable sections.
- Expand the X axis area and change the Text size to 14. Scroll down and expand the Y axis section and again set the Text size to 14. Scroll down again, expand the Title section, and set the Text size to 14 once again. Just above Text size, select the middle Alignment icon to center our title within our visualization.
Note the changes happening to our visual as you perform these operations. The text size for our x and y axes increases as well as the size of the text of our title. Next, modify the Title text to read Number of Working Days by Month.
Let's now make one additional formatting change.
- Scroll up and expand the Data labels section. Notice that everything is grayed out and cannot be modified.
- Activate this section by using the toggle icon to the right of the Data labels text. Numeric values appear above the columns in our visualization. Increase the Text size to 14. Change the Position to Inside end. Finally, toggle on Show background.
Note that additional settings appear below Show background. Change the Background color to the default top yellow color and set the Transparency to 25%.
Your visual should now look like the following screenshot:
Figure 10: Improved column chart visualization