Level 6 · Default tooltips and report-page tooltips

A tooltip is the box that appears when you hover a data point. It’s the cheapest detail in a report: no space taken, no click needed. Power BI gives you two kinds.

What you are working in

This quiz runs in a practice page, not Power BI. To try tooltips for real you need Power BI Desktop (Windows) or the online editor in Power BI Service; both have the panes described below.

The default tooltip

Every visual has one. It lists the fields of the hovered point: the category on the axis and the value, “Textiles, 402”. To add numbers to it, select the visual and drag fields into the Tooltips well at the bottom of the Build pane in Visualizations. Each field is summarised for the hovered point, so you could add return rate or total refunds next to the count.

The default tooltip is a list of values. It can’t show a breakdown or a chart.

The report-page tooltip

A report-page tooltip is a report page you design and Power BI shows on hover. To build one in Power BI Desktop:

1. Add a page (the + at the bottom). Rename it, for example Reason tooltip.
2. With nothing selected, open Format page → Page information and turn on Allow use as tooltip.
3. In Format page → Canvas settings, set Type to Tooltip, a small 320 × 240 canvas.
4. Put the visual on it: a bar chart of returned lines by returns[reason].
5. Back on the returns page, select the column chart, open Format visual → General → Tooltips, set Type to Report page and Page to Reason tooltip.

Hover Textiles and the pop-up shows the four reasons for Textiles only: 229 changed mind, 76 wrong item, 53 late, 44 damaged. Hover Furniture and it redraws for Furniture, where damage leads.

Why it follows the hover

When Power BI shows a tooltip page, it evaluates its visuals with the filters of the hovered data point added to their filter context, just as a cross-filter would. The page’s own filters still apply. Measures that ignore a filter with REMOVEFILTERS ignore it here too, which is how a tooltip can show “Textiles: 24% of all returns”.

A tooltip page can also be shown automatically: drag fields into the tooltip page’s own Tooltip fields well, and any visual on the report that uses those fields offers it, as long as its tooltip Type is left on Auto.

Common mistakes

• A full-size tooltip page. Keep it small and readable; a pop-up the size of a page is a page.
• Forgetting to hide it. Readers can still open the tooltip page as a page. Right-click its tab → Hide page.
• Repeating the main chart. A tooltip should add something the visual doesn’t show: a breakdown, a trend, a comparison.