Ah, January! The month of resolutions, unreasonable diets, being “dry”, and here in Canada, the darkest and coldest month of the year. It’s exactly the time when warm carb-rich foods and booze work the best.

I’m going to start this year with a simple love letter to Microsoft and Power BI, and when I say “love letter”, I mean I’m going to write about 2 really BASIC data visualization options that I (and every other Power BI designer worth their salt) would LOVE to have added to the program.

These 2 items (just 2!) would make Power BI sooo much more People-Friendly! They are two things that every other visualization software has … so what gives, Microsoft?

It’s a 2 item wishlist, darlin’. Nice and easy, right?

Wishlist Item 1: Axis Interval options

Somehow, in the year 2025, the popular data dashboard software made by one of the most valuable companies in the world does NOT let people customize the axis intervals on their charts.

Let me give you a bar chart example:

See those X-Axes along the bottoms of these charts? Power BI decides what intervals should be displayed and does NOT give you a chance to change it.

Want to set the intervals to occur at every multiple of 10? 25? 50? How about you are counting up days, weeks, months, etc and having an axis interval of 7 or 28 or 12 or anything other than the default intervals would help your chart be easier for your viewers to understand…?

Tough sh–, Sherlock.

We can’t do it.

Does Excel let us change axis intervals? Hell yes… it’s been able to do it for a few decades.

Does Tableau, Power BI’s largest competitor let us change axis intervals? YOU BETCHA.

Will my Axis Interval Control wish come true in 2025? MAYBE.

This item is on the Power BI Core Visuals Vision Board as a “pending” feature.

Wishlist Item 2: Label Placement and Visibility

You know what you can do in Excel? You know Excel right? That other Microsoft program that can visualize data?

In Excel, you can select ANY label and adjust where it should be in relation to a data point. Above, below, left, right, centered? YOU CAN DO IT.

You can choose if a series of data should have labels on every data point or just a couple. You can literally click each one and decide if you want it visible or not.

Power BI doesn’t let you do this.

It lets you choose the “density” of labels on a data series (100% density means every data point has a label… 50% means half do… maybe… but Power BI decides which labels are in that half).

Power BI lets you choose if an entire series of data has labels “Above” or “Under” a data series. You do NOT have the option of “Left” or “Right” or “Centered”. Don’t even dream of clicking an individual label and expecting to format it.

(don’t even get me started on whoever decided the wording options should be “Above” and “Under“… Above goes with Below. Over goes with Under… in every world except the Power BI dimension.)

Now, I’ve figured out how to custom place labels, like in the Bump Chart below where I centered labels on data points but it takes quite a bit of Power Query magic and potions to make it happen…

… but should you have to resort to magic and potions and hurting your brain figuring out Power Query editor to make a SIMPLE thing like Label Placement possible?

NO. It should be easy, just like it is in Excel.

Will my Label Positioning wish come true in 2025? DOUBT IT.

This is nowhere on the Power BI Vision Board, that I can see, but it’s a freakin’ mess regarding navigation and finding anything, so maybe it’s there somewhere?

Sincerely Yours…

So, these are 2 of the most important things Microsoft SHOULD add to Power BI to make it a dashboard software that does these BASIC things.

I don’t personally believe we’ll see either of them, but we can have hope (and I can keep nagging them).

Until then, I’ll figure out workarounds for these. I’ve already figured out custom label placement!

What about you? What useful feature would you like to see added to Power BI in 2025? Let me know in the comments down below.

Take care everyone,

Joe.