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14. Visuals and Their Formatting

14.1 Creating a Visual Step by Step

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Start with a problem

Rani runs operations for a fictional quick-commerce brand in Pune, Nashik and Kolhapur. On Monday at 9:00 IST she asks Shahrukh one question: which city sold the most last week? He has the order export, but nothing on the report canvas yet.

Explain simply

A visual is a chart, table or card built from fields. You choose the visual type first, then drop fields into its field wells – the boxes in the Build pane called X-axis, Y-axis, Legend, Values and so on. A field in Y-axis is summed (aggregated – many rows combined into one number) for each item on the X-axis.

Show the data

Order ID Order Date City Store Platform Category Amount (₹) Delivery mins Status
301 06-Apr-2026 Pune Kothrud Blinkit Dairy 400 8 Delivered
302 06-Apr-2026 Pune Baner Amazon Now Snacks 200 12 Delivered
303 07-Apr-2026 Nashik Gangapur Blinkit Dairy 300 14 Delivered
304 04-May-2026 Nashik College Road Blinkit Fruits 150 9 Delivered
305 04-May-2026 Kolhapur Rajarampuri Amazon Now Snacks 450 7 Delivered
306 05-May-2026 Pune Kothrud Blinkit Fruits 250 16 Delivered
307 05-May-2026 Nashik College Road Amazon Now Dairy 350 11 Delivered
308 05-May-2026 Kolhapur Rajarampuri Blinkit Dairy 0 Cancelled

About this data: This table uses columns: Order ID, Order Date, City, Store, Platform, Category, Amount (₹), Delivery mins, Status. This table uses columns: City, Total Sales (₹). This table uses columns: Wrong result, Reason, Correction. Values shown are the lesson examples already on this page (not a new dataset).

Fictional sample data. Practice file: visuals_orders_apr_may_2026.csv (source: src/practice/).

Demonstrate

  1. Open Power BI Desktop › Home › Get data › Text/CSV › choose the practice file › Load.
  2. In the Visualizations pane, click Clustered bar chart. An empty placeholder appears on the canvas.
  3. From the Data pane, drag City into Y-axis. Why: one bar per city.
  4. Drag Amount into X-axis. Power BI shows Sum of Amount.
  5. Better: Home › New measure › Total Sales = SUM(Orders[Amount]) › Enter, then replace Sum of Amount with Total Sales.
  6. Resize the visual by dragging its corner; give it a title in Format visual › General › Title: Total Sales by City.

Show the result

Choose the chart from the question, sample layout with fictional data

Your result should look like this (fictional sample):

City Total Sales (₹)
Pune 850
Nashik 800
Kolhapur 450
Total 2,100

Explain what happened

For each bar, Power BI filters the Orders rows to that city, then evaluates Total Sales on only those rows: Pune = 400 + 200 + 250 = 850. The bar order is by value (descending) because the visual sorts by the measure by default.

Explore further

  • Swap to a Clustered column chart with one click – the field wells keep your fields.
  • Add Platform to Legend to split each bar (section 14.4).

Detailed reference for this lesson:

Steps in Power BI

  1. In Report view, click an empty area of the canvas (so no visual is selected).
  2. In the Visualizations pane, open Build visual (the first icon) and click a visual type, e.g. Clustered column chart. An empty placeholder appears.
  3. Drag fields from the Data pane into the field wells (for example X-axis = DarkStore[City], Y-axis = [Total Orders]). Or tick a field in the Data pane and Power BI places it for you.
  4. Resize with the handles and move it by dragging its border. Hold Shift while resizing to keep proportions. Use View › Gridlines / Snap to grid for alignment.
  5. Open Format visual (the paintbrush icon) to format it (14.2).
  6. Use More options (…) on the visual header to Sort axis (for example Total Orders, Descending), Show as a table, Export data and Spotlight.
  7. To change the visual type, select it and click a different icon. Fields are kept where possible.

Ravindra Bagale's Tip

Friends, many students drag fields onto an empty canvas and accept whatever chart Power BI picks. Choose the visual type first, then drop fields into the right wells (X-axis, Y-axis, Legend). Also use your measures, not raw numeric columns, so you don't end up with an implicit "Sum of Amount". Don't worry – after doing it two or three times, it becomes a habit.

Fix common mistakes

Wrong result Reason Correction
Bars show Count of Amount The field was set to Count in the well Click the arrow next to the field in the well › Sum, or use the Total Sales measure
All bars are the same length City came from a table with no relationship to Orders Use City from the related table, or fix the relationship in Model view
Order ID appears as a huge number Power BI summed the ID column Column tools › Summarization › Don't summarize on ID columns

Practise independently

Practice task

Build a Clustered column chart of Total Sales by Category from the practice file. Write the three values on paper first.

Hints
  • Category is on the X-axis for a column chart.
  • Dairy has four rows, one of them is ₹0.
Solution

Dairy ₹1,050 (400 + 300 + 350 + 0), Snacks ₹650 (200 + 450), Fruits ₹400 (150 + 250). Total ₹2,100.

Think like a professional

In a job, the first visual you build should answer the manager's sentence, not show off the gallery. Interview tip: say I always create an explicit measure before building visuals, so every chart uses the same definition.

Ravi Sir's Cards for this lesson

Create a visual step by step. A report is made of visuals. Building one in a fixed order is fast and gives fewer mistakes.Revision card

मराठी cards