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Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

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Todd Chittenden on 19 Feb 2016 01:23:31

When creating a (horizontal) bar chart, often the space allocated for the axis (Y Axis: category or series) is not wide enough if the names are long. There should be an override setting in the Format page to adjust one way or the other.
Also, there is the ability to place the labels on the RIGHT side, but no way to reverse or mirror the bars such that the zero point is on the right side.
Would also like the ability to RIGHT JUSTIFY labels on the LEFT side of the bars, and LEFT justify labels on the Right side.

Comments (11)
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Anders Bergmål on 06 Jul 2020 00:17:00

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

Totally agree. Also if you want two place a second horizontal bar chart under the first one, the start point of the actual bars depend on the text lenght of your labels. Which makes it impossible to align the charts in a nice way.

We need to be able to explicitly set the label area width, either by dragging the "column" in the visual, or by applying a number in format settings pane. Or both.

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David Williams on 06 Jul 2020 00:16:36

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

Completely agree with the improvements already stated for category labels on bar charts. I wanted to add that we really should have a way to toggle word-wrap on these labels as well.

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Brian on 05 Jul 2020 23:46:56

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

Agreed. Features (In Axis rollup) should be as follows:

1) Toggle to allow current Percentage based setting or specify an exact pixel dimension.
Using % should calculate and ghost pixels and vice-versa.
2) Add "ON TOP" label position to show label over bar (In addition to Left and Right)
3) Change label justification
4) Reverse bar direction (Create bars to left of origin)

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Christopher Hahn on 05 Jul 2020 23:46:31

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

This is especially important in ToolTip reports, where the user can't hover to get the full label.

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Marc Buckingham on 05 Jul 2020 23:40:35

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

Its so odd that this problem exists. I hope it gets fixed soon.

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Tim Bennett on 05 Jul 2020 23:32:57

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

This is partially solved (version 2.63.3272): in the bar chart's FORMAT tab, under Y-AXIS, set the MAXIMUM SIZE slider to modify the space available for labels. Set the POSITION dropdown to left or right to change the label position (but this does not put the zero point on the right side).

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Josh Cole on 05 Jul 2020 23:31:02

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

Tableau does this, why can't Power BI?

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Mathijs Versteeg on 05 Jul 2020 23:30:47

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

Come on, we need this!

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Sergey Volynkin on 05 Jul 2020 23:24:53

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

It will be great if the PowerBI team will provide well-built, well-structured, well-documented build-in visuals implemented as custom visuals, that will help to create some kind of 'standard' in developing custom visuals.

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Wade on 05 Jul 2020 23:00:25

RE: Bar Chart Label Area not wide enough for category labels, needs custom width property in Format

the Attribute Slicer allows you to define the portion that the bars take to give more space for the y-axis labels. need to have the regular bar charts to do the same.