Troubleshoot visualizations in Power BI
APPLIES TO: 
Power BI Desktop
Power BI service
The document provides considerations and limitations for Power BI visualizations, and how to troubleshoot common content distribution issues. It addresses potential issues, and known issues, while offering solutions to ensure consistency and optimal performance in report design and user experience.
Slicers and filters
This section addresses potential issues users might encounter with slicers and filters.
Clear button
Users might experience difficulty locating the Clear button for the original slicer visuals. The Clear button, indicated by an eraser icon, is located in the Slicer header and only becomes visible upon mouse hover. Some report authors might choose to disable the Slicer header and enable the Visual container title which is disabled by default for these visuals. To ensure access to the Clear button, restore the Slicer header visibility. For the Slicer (new) visuals, we moved the Clear button into the Visual container Header and removed the concept of a separate Slicer header. For these Slicer (new) visuals, if the report author disabled the Visual container header, the Clear button won't be available.
We recommended report authors select the Clear icon and Save in that state before publishing, especially for range slicers. For other slicer types, you might intentionally save a default selection so that report consumers start with a specific set of filters, but Date range slicers typically work best when starting cleared. Use care to ensure slicers are cleared, or intentionally set, when creating Bookmarks.
Persistent filters
Power BI reports have a setting that allows end-user slicer and filter choices to be saved automatically and reapplied when they return to view a report later on. This setting, enabled by default, can lead to different experiences for different users. When reports also utilize Bookmarks, it can potentially lead to unexpected results.
If you want all report consumers to start from the same filter state, you can disable Persistent filters on the report. This setting ensures that user modifications to filters aren't saved, maintaining the report’s original filter configuration as published by the author. Users can always reset to the authored state by clicking the Reset to default button in the top right area.
To disable Persistent filters in Power BI Desktop, open the Options and settings dialog from the File menu and select Options. In the Options dialog box, navigate to the Current file section, select Report settings to display the Persistent filters section, and check the box labeled Don't allow end user to save filters on this report to disable Persistent filters.
To disable Persistent filters in Power BI service, open Settings from the File menu to display the Report settings panel, then toggle the Persistent filters option to enable the Don't allow end user to save filters on this report option, ensuring that user modifications to filters aren't saved.
Selection
The term Select all can be misleading in its operation. Contrary to what the term suggests, Select all doesn't actually select every item. Instead, it operates on an inverted selection principle, meaning that any item you deselect becomes part of the query. This approach is more efficient as it avoids sending thousands of values in the query. By only sending the deselected values in a negated filter, we streamline the process and reduce the query load.
When the Slicer is used to filter reports, the Selected Values might persist as selected even when they're no longer applicable, potentially leading to confusion and a misleading restatement of selected items. The Slicer saves the selected values, which can remain visible and selected in subsequent views of the report. However, if the underlying data or user permissions change, these selections might no longer be relevant or appropriate. Report authors should avoid saving and publishing reports with selected items that might be inappropriate for certain users, particularly in environments where Row-Level Security (RLS) is implemented. It's advisable to clear any selections that shouldn't be universally applied before saving and distributing the report.
What if
The What if parameters in Power BI are designed to handle up to 1,000 unique values. If a parameter exceeds this limit, the values are evenly sampled, which might not meet the needs of detailed scenario analysis. This limitation is in place to ensure performance and manageability within Power BI. When more than 1,000 unique values are needed, the parameter values are sampled to fit within this constraint, potentially leading to a loss of granularity. To work around this limitation, you can adjust the granularity of your What If parameters to ensure that the total number of unique values doesn't exceed 1000.
Report locale
This section addresses potential issues users might encounter with dates in visuals.
Format strings
In Power BI, certain visual elements don't utilize the model format string for dates to conserve space and present only the necessary detail. This can lead to confusion when the displayed date format doesn't match the user’s expectations. For these elements, Power BI uses the browser’s locale settings to determine the date format. This means that the format might vary depending on the user’s browser configuration, which influences how dates are displayed in the report. To ensure consistency, report creators should be aware of the browser locale’s impact on date formatting. Common areas affected by this include Slicers, and Cartesian Axis Tick Labels, and some sections of the Filter Pane.
Display units suffix
Power BI dynamically alters the display units suffix to match the regional or system settings of the user’s environment. This automatic adaptation ensures consistency with local conventions but could lead to confusion when sharing reports across different geographies or systems. Currently, there's no direct feature within Power BI to lock the display units suffix irrespective of location/system settings. However, users can manually adjust the format settings of the visuals to specify a consistent display unit. This adjustment needs to be done individually for each visual component that displays values. In order for custom format string to display you must not have a display unit set in the visuals format settings, you might need to select reset to default to clear any display unit override.
Fonts
This section addresses potential issues users could encounter with fonts in Power BI.
Default fonts
macOS users might encounter font rendering issues with Microsoft-owned fonts, as these fonts aren't included by default on macOS systems. Due to the absence of certain Microsoft fonts, macOS defaults to alternative fonts. This fallback can result in discrepancies in text rendering, particularly in terms of font size and layout consistency. To address this, users can manually install the missing Microsoft fonts on their macOS devices. This ensures that reports and documents render with the intended appearance. Alternatively, report creators can opt for fonts that are commonly available across both Windows and macOS platforms to avoid such issues.
Custom fonts
When incorporating a custom font into Power BI reports, it’s essential to specify the font correctly in the Custom Theme file. You must reference the font by its correct operating system (OS) name, which could differ from its display name. Using the display name can result in the font not being recognized or applied in the report. To ensure the correct font name is used, navigate to the Fonts section in the Windows Control Panel. Here, you can verify the exact OS name of the font. Once confirmed, use this name in your Custom Theme file to successfully apply the custom font to your Power BI report.
The font used in a Power BI report must be installed on the local machine of each end user. This is because fonts aren't embedded within the report itself. If a font isn't installed locally, it isn't displayed correctly when an end user views the report. This can lead to inconsistencies in the report’s appearance and can affect the overall user experience. To ensure uniformity in font usage across all end users, we recommend using an IT Group Policy for the centralized distribution of fonts within your company. This policy facilitates the installation of the required fonts on all relevant machines, thus maintaining the intended design and readability of the report.
Also note that custom fonts might not be available or render correctly when an export command is executed that causes rendering on the server, such as exporting to PDF, exporting to PowerPoint, or exporting to images when using email subscriptions.
Colors
This section addresses potential issues users might encounter with report colors.
Series color assignment
In Power BI, the assignment of theme colors to series can vary depending on whether the series is static or dynamic. This can lead to inconsistencies in color representation across different report views. For static series, Power BI assigns theme colors based on the index order of the series. However, for dynamic series, colors are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. As a result, the colors that are chosen for a series could change depending on the sequence in which report pages are viewed, when filters are applied in a different order, or depending on the user if Row-Level Security (RLS) is employed. To maintain color consistency for dynamic series, we recommend you explicitly define the color for each series within the report’s formatting settings. This ensures that each series retains its designated color regardless of the viewing order or applied filters.
Themes
This section addresses potential issues users might encounter when working with custom themes.
Default settings
When setting visual-specific format options in Power BI, this can override any of the predefined properties in a custom theme. This occurs because explicit formatting at the visual level takes precedence over theme-level settings. As a result, any custom theme settings don't apply if existing format options have been set for a particular visual.
For example, to allow custom theme colors to take effect, you need to reset the visual colors to default formatting. This can be done by clicking Reset to Default within the color formatting options of the visual. Once the specific formatting is cleared, the custom theme colors should apply as intended, if an explicit color isn't set for that visual.
As another example, when you specify Legend Position = Left in a custom theme file, but specify something else at the visual level, you should always Reset to Default to allow the custom theme to apply.
Maps
This section addresses potential issues users might encounter when working with map visuals.
Bing maps
Bing Maps for Power BI is being deprecated and should no longer be used for geographical data representation in Power BI. As part of the transition to more advanced and business focused services, Azure Maps is recommended as the alternative to Bing Maps for Power BI. Azure Maps provides a rich set of geographical data services and features that are continually updated. To adapt to this change, users should start utilizing Azure Maps for their mapping needs in Power BI. You can convert your Bing Map visuals to Azure Maps by selecting the visual and them selecting the Azure Map icon in the Visualization pane. We attempt to preserve your formatting settings during conversion. Alternatively, you might notice the popup when opening the report in Desktop, with an option to convert all your Bing Maps to Azure Maps. For a comprehensive understanding of Azure Maps, including how to get started, what data is sent to Azure, and its limitations, refer to the detailed documentation provided by Microsoft.
Geocoding
To ensure geocoding accuracy in Power BI, make sure your model has pristine data for each distinct location entity and avoid concatenating strings. Assign the correct Data Category to each location entity, like State or Zipcode. Build a Location hierarchy within your model or place multiple fields in the location field well for precise geocoding. Use the Expand All Down icon to drill into the lowest hierarchy level, which includes all higher levels. This helps resolve ambiguities in locations with the same names, such as distinguishing Paris, Texas from Paris, France. Adding Country into your Location hierarchy, and using the Drill Down or Expand All functions, improves your desired geocoding outcomes.
Tooltips
This section addresses potential issues users might experience with tooltips.
Page tooltips
Report Page Tooltips aren't displayed for Dashboard Visual Tiles or Report-Page Dashboard Tiles. By design, Dashboards in Power BI don't currently support Report Page Tooltips. Dashboard Tiles take minimal snapshots of pinned content, and don't have a reference to the Report Page that is designed as a Tooltip. As a best practice, we recommended designing Dashboards without relying on report-page tooltips to ensure necessary information is clearly presented.
Line chart tooltips
Users might notice that Line Chart Tooltips are displayed differently than other charts. By default, we show all series values and a vertical alignment bar to help users compare all series values within a specific category. In some cases, the standard datapoint tooltip will render, such as for Combo Charts and when Line Charts enter high-density sampling due to hitting data limits. Different filters could push the query slightly higher or lower than the limits, resulting in different tooltips at different times for the same line chart visual. For more information about high-density line sampling, see our article: High-Density Line Sampling in Power BI.
Images
This section addresses potential issues users might encounter with including images into their visualizations.
Image URLs
If an image within a Power BI report isn't rendering, it could be due to the image URL not being anonymously accessible. Power BI requires the image URL to be anonymously accessible without requiring a sign-in to view. Images can't be hosted on sites that require authentication, such as SharePoint or OneDrive.
To ensure the image URL is publicly accessible, open the image URL in an InPrivate mode browser window. If the image loads without requiring a sign-in, you correctly configured the image URL for use in Power BI. Loading images from a local path is also not supported in Power BI Desktop or in the Power BI service.
Likewise, Power BI mobile apps will only display if the image URL is anonymously accessible. Again, the image can't be hosted on a site that requires a sign-in, such as SharePoint or OneDrive, even if you can see the image in Power BI Desktop or in the Power BI service.