Add text boxes, shapes, and smart narrative visuals to Power BI reports

APPLIES TO: Power BI Desktop Power BI service

You can add text boxes, shapes, and smart narrative visuals to reports in Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service. The smart narrative visual uses artificial intelligence to provide a text summary of your visuals and reports. In either Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service, you must have editing permissions for the report. If a report has been shared with you in the Power BI service, you won't have editing permissions.

Watch Will use Power BI Desktop to add static images to a report. You can then try it out in the Power BI service with the steps that follow.

Note

This video might use earlier versions of Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service.

Add a text box to a report

This procedure uses the Retail Analysis sample available in the Power BI service.

  1. In Power BI Desktop, go to the Home tab, select Insert, and then select Text box.

    Screenshot of Power BI Desktop, highlighting the Text box.

  1. Power BI places an empty text box on the canvas. To position the text box, select the grey area at the top and drag to your desired location. To resize the text box, select and drag any of the sizing handles.

    Screenshot of the text box on the canvas.

  2. Type your text into the text box. You can then set the format font style, including color, size, and subscript or superscript, and text alignment, including indents and bulleted lists.

  3. With the text box still selected, add other formatting in the Format text box pane. In this example, the text has a theme color, and added bullets and superscript. You can also specify an exact size and position for a text box.

    Screenshot of the text box with example font, font size, and alignment.

  4. When you finish editing the text box, select any blank space on the report canvas.

  5. In the Power BI service, you can also pin a text box to a dashboard. Select the pin icon, then select the dashboard where you want to pin it.

    Screenshot of a dashboard with a pinned text box.

Add a shape to a report

You can add shapes to Power BI reports with a variety of formatting options and styling. You can also upgrade old shapes in your reports.

See the following video demonstrating the flexibility you have when creating shapes.

Note

This video might use earlier versions of Power BI Desktop or the Power BI service.

Now you're ready to create your own shapes:

  1. Place your cursor anywhere on the report canvas and select Shapes.

    Screenshot showing Shapes selected from the menu.

  2. From the dropdown, select a shape to add it to your report canvas. Then, in the Format pane, you can customize the shape to suit your needs. For this example, the arrow has been rotated 45 degrees and formatted to include text and a shadow.

    Screenshot of an arrow shape that's been formatted by adding text, shadow, and rotation.

  3. To position the shape, select the grey area at the top and drag to the desired location. To resize the shape, select and drag any of the sizing handles. As with the text box, you can also create an exact size and position for a shape.

    Note

    Shapes cannot be pinned to a dashboard, except as one of the visuals when you pin a live page.

Add a smart narrative

You can also add a smart narrative to your report. The smart narrative visualization uses artificial intelligence to provide a text summary of your visuals and reports. It provides relevant insights that you can customize.

  1. In the Visualizations pane, select the Smart narrative icon. If you don't see it, you may need to turn on the preview.

    Screenshot of the Visualizations pane, highlighting the Smart narrative icon.

  2. Power BI creates a text box with auto-generated text describing interesting features of the data in your report.

    Screenshot of Power BI service, highlighting the Smart narrative text box.

  3. You can format it as you would any other text box. The smart narrative underlines values found in the data.

Read more about smart narratives.

For more information, see: