In this blog, I'll describe how you can create a custom tooltip (or help text) that pops up when you hover over text using Power BI. But first, what are the use cases for this?
You may want to save space by hiding your legend.
Tooltips don't appear if there is no data in the visual.
Ok, so how is this done? The trick is to use the Treemap visual to display a custom tooltip.
1) Create the custom tooltip.
To do this, simply create a new tab on Power BI desktop. In the settings, just enable the tooltip toggle. You'll also want to adjust the tab size - I made mine to be 420 x 240.
2) Create a Measure called "Info".
Create a measure and call it "Info", or whatever meets your needs. You don't need to do any calculation, but it does need to be a number. I just made it equal to 1.
3) Insert a Treemap
Insert a treemap visual and assign the measure to it. It should look like this.
4) Format the Treemap
Now you just need to format it so that it appears at standard text.
- Remove the title
- Remove the background
- Change the color of the category to white (or whatever the main background is that you have)
- Change the label color to a noticeable color (like blue).
And you're done! Now you have a text object on your dashboard that can display more information when you hover your mouse over it. Go grab a beer now (or hot cocoa - whatever you enjoy).
