Power BI Course
Report View Basics
Report View is where your cleaned data and connected model finally becomes something people can read and interact with. This lesson covers everything you need to understand about the canvas, how visuals are added and arranged, how pages work, and how to build your first complete page from scratch.
The Report View Canvas — Orientation
When you switch to Report View you see a white rectangular canvas in the centre. This is the page — the surface on which you place visuals. Everything the report viewer will see and interact with lives on this canvas. Around it are the panels that help you build it.
Adding Your First Visual
There are two ways to add a visual to the canvas. Both end up in the same place — a visual on the canvas with fields ready to be configured.
Field Wells — Connecting Data to Visuals
When you select a visual, the Visualizations panel shows a set of field wells — labelled slots that control what the visual displays. Each visual type has different wells. Understanding what each well does is essential for building charts that show exactly what you intend.
Selecting, Moving, and Resizing Visuals
Every visual on the canvas behaves like an object you can move and resize. Knowing the selection handles and keyboard shortcuts saves significant time when arranging a page.
Alignment and Distribution
Misaligned visuals make a report look unprofessional. Power BI has built-in alignment tools that snap multiple visuals into perfect alignment or equal spacing in seconds.
Working with Pages
A Power BI report can have multiple pages — shown as tabs at the bottom of the canvas. Each page is an independent canvas with its own set of visuals. Slicers on one page do not automatically affect other pages unless you configure cross-page sync (covered in Lesson 13). Use pages to organise your report into logical sections.
The Filters Pane
The Filters pane sits to the right of the canvas and is separate from slicers. Filters here are applied silently — report viewers can see them in Service if the pane is visible, but they do not take up canvas space. There are three levels and each has a different scope.
Building Your First Page — Step by Step
Here is the exact sequence to build a clean, functional Overview page from a connected model. Follow these steps in order on any dataset and you will have a working report page in under ten minutes.
Step 1 — Set the page canvas size
View → Page View → Fit to Page (so you see the full canvas)
View → Page View → Actual Size (for pixel-accurate work)
Default canvas is 1280 × 720 px (16:9) — good for most reports
Step 2 — Add a title text box
Insert → Text Box → type report title (e.g. "Sales Overview 2024")
Set font size 20–24, bold, dark colour
Place at top-left of canvas
Step 3 — Add KPI cards across the top
Click Card visual in Visualizations panel (three times — one per KPI)
Card 1: drag Revenue to the Values well → shows Total Revenue
Card 2: drag OrderID to Values → change aggregation to Count → shows Total Orders
Card 3: drag Revenue to Values → change aggregation to Average → shows Avg Order Value
Line them up horizontally using Format → Align → Align Top
Step 4 — Add a bar chart for revenue by category
Click Bar Chart visual
X Axis: drag Category from Products table
Y Axis: drag Revenue from Orders table (auto-sums)
Resize to occupy left 60% of remaining canvas space
Step 5 — Add a slicer for date
Click Slicer visual
Field: drag OrderDate from Orders table
In Format → Slicer Settings → Style → set to Between (date range picker)
Place at top-right of canvas
Step 6 — Add a table visual for order detail
Click Table visual
Columns: OrderID, CustomerName, ProductName, Revenue, Status
Note: CustomerName comes from Customers table — works because
the relationship between Orders and Customers is active
Resize to bottom-right area of canvas
Step 7 — Test cross-filtering
Click any bar in the bar chart → the table should filter to
only show orders from that category
Click a region in a map or slicer → all visuals update together
This confirms your relationships are working| 1001 | Alice | $1,200 |
| 1002 | Bob | $350 |
| 1003 | Alice | $85 |
Cross-Filtering Between Visuals
One of Power BI's most powerful features is automatic cross-filtering — clicking a data point in one visual automatically filters every other visual on the same page. This happens by default whenever your model relationships are correctly set up. No configuration is needed.
Teacher's Note: When you first build a page and click a visual but nothing else filters, there are two likely causes. Either the relationship between the two tables is missing (check Model View), or the relationship exists but is inactive (double-click the relationship line and check the Active checkbox). A grey dashed line in Model View means the relationship is inactive — Power BI only allows one active relationship between the same pair of tables. Make sure the relationship you need for cross-filtering is the active one.
Practice
Practice 1 of 3
In the Visualizations panel, the labelled slots where you drag fields to control what a visual displays — such as X Axis, Y Axis, and Legend — are called field ___.
Practice 2 of 3
A filter added to the "Filters on all ___" section of the Filters pane applies to every visual on every page of the entire report.
Practice 3 of 3
When you click a data point in one visual and all other visuals on the page automatically update to reflect that selection, this feature is called cross-___.
Lesson Quiz
Quiz 1 of 3
You add a bar chart showing Revenue by Category. The bars are all the same height and all showing the total revenue figure — not broken down by category. What is the most likely cause?
Quiz 2 of 3
You want to permanently exclude all orders with Status = "Test" from every visual on every page of your report without touching Power Query. What is the correct approach?
Quiz 3 of 3
You click the "North" bar in a Regional Revenue chart but no other visuals on the page update. Model View shows a relationship between Customers and Orders with a grey dashed line. What is the problem?
Next up — Lesson 13 covers Page Navigation in depth — how to build buttons that move between pages, how to sync slicers across pages, how to use bookmarks to save and restore view states, and how to design a multi-page report that feels like a real application.