How to conditionally format visuals in Power BI?

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Do you know that you can apply conditional formatting rules to visuals in Power BI? In this post, let’s learn how to conditionally format visuals in Power BI. Something like this:

How to conditionally format visuals in Power BI

To conditional format charts in Power BI, follow below instructions.

  1. Select the visual you want to apply formatting rules.
  2. Go to Format pane and click on “Data colors”.
  3. When you hover on the label “Default color”, you notice three dots. Click on them to activate “Conditional format” screen.
Activating conditional formatting feature from data colors - demo
  1. Here you can define a rule for coloring the chart. There are 3 types of conditional formats (as of writing this post in last week of July, 2019). They are,
    1. Color scales
    2. Rules
    3. Field value

Color scales:

As the name suggests, this will create a continuous color scale from minimum to maximum value. You can opt for diverging scale to include a midpoint color too. I am not a big fan of this for normal charts (although I do use it on tables / matrix visuals).

Color scale rule for conditional formatting in visuals - demo

Rules:

This gives you flexibility to define a rule based logic for coloring. You can write rules to color chart elements based on number or item rules. See this example to understand how to set up a rule to highlight all cities where “Quantity per Transaction” is less than 8.2 in different color.

Adding rule based conditional formatting - example
Sample rules in Power BI visual conditional formatting

This is how our final chart would look:

Final output of conditional formatting based on rules
Demo of Conditional Formatting in Power BI based on rules

Field Value:

You can also write a measure (or have a table field) that returns HEX code (or RGB code) for the color you want to use for each chart element. If you have such a measure, you can use Field value based rules to set them. For example, you can create a measure like [Column Color] and link it.

[Column Color] = IF([Quantity per Transaction]>8.2, "#999999", "#c82222")

When you link this [Column Color] measure to the chart on Field value rule, your columns will be either of those colors (#999999 or #c82222) based on the [Quantity per Transaction] for each item in the chart.

How to make rules based on dynamic values?

As of now, the conditional formatting in Power BI only accepts rules based on fixed (hardcoded) values. But we can create an intermediate measure to overcome this limitation. For example, we can create a measure like this:

[Rule outcome for highlighting] = IF([Quantity per Transaction] > [QpT Target], 1, 0)

We can then use [Rule outcome for highlighting] in the rules and color based on the fixed values of 0 or 1.

How to conditionally format visuals in Power BI – Video tutorial

If you are still confused or need some guidance, please watch this 10 minute video. It explains all 3 types of conditional formatting with examples. Watch the video below or on our YouTube Channel.

Download Sample Workbook – Conditional formatting in Power BI

Please download the sample file for this tutorial here. You can see a demo of all three types of rules. Feel free to examine the data model, measures or create something on your own to learn how it all works.

Learn more about conditional formatting in Power BI:

Microsoft has been enhancing conditional formatting feature in Power BI over time. Just recently (in July 2019 release) they have launched support for icon rules (similar to Excel conditional formatting icons) for tables & matrix visuals. Learn more about conditional formatting in Power BI by reading Power BI docs.

More Power BI examples & tutorials:

Do you use conditional formatting in Power BI?

I have been using CF more often in my Power BI training / work as it is a powerful way to highlight important information without cluttering your reports.

What about you? Have you toyed with conditional formatting in Power BI? Got any interesting tips to share? Please post them in the comments.

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28 Responses to “FIFA Worldcup 2018 Excel Tracker – FREE Download”

  1. Andy F says:

    Good work as always - I liked the way you did the "menu" on the left hand side (although the buttons aren't lined up between tabs if I'm being ultra picky)

    Have you previously written about the method of extracting the Wikipedia page into Power Query? It's not something I recall seeing before.

    ps other geeky observsations:

    - the bracket columns are too narrow for the date & match number - and will need to be wider still when the team names get populated
    - match 51 should be Moscow (Luzhniki) for consistency
    - it's not possible to be 23 hours ahead of GMT - the International Dateline gets in the way! I think the maximum is 14. There are also a couple of countries who work to a quarter hour to make it really complicated!
    - There's a typo in the how-to - "compated" instead of compared

    • Chandoo says:

      Thanks for the lovely feedback. I have fixed almost all of them.

      1) button alignment: this is tricky as row heights can change between sheets.
      2) Column width is fixed now so bracket view looks better
      3) Updated the stadium name
      4) Did not bother with the 23 hours ahead thingie. This is more of a novelty feature 😛
      5) Fixed the type
      6) Fixed an issue with live score table. This should work as long as the points table is maintained in wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup

      7) I have not discussed the technique of reading all tables on webpage to one big table. Watch out for a blog post on this soon.

      • Andy F says:

        Button alignment is one for the ultra-OCD sufferers 😉 There are ways, but only for those with too much time on their hands.

        • Chandoo says:

          Aah, Excel. The perfect tool for people like us. Everything (cells) is in same shape and size by default and aligned perfectly. 😀

          • Etienne says:

            Is there actually a way to copy row heights (in the same way you copy column widths?)

            By the way Chandoo, great post. I'm forwarding to my department. I actually use another query from the same page to automatically fill in the team names for the knock-out stages (I made one for round of 16 which I then duplicated and edited for quarter-finals etc.) This is incredible, I was always wondering how to do these type of queries from the web, and now I know 🙂

  2. Jake says:

    Hello!

    This is quite amazing and incredibly cool to use 🙂

    Testing the constraints of this sheets a few errors popped I noticed:
    - Vlookup Group E-H refers to column J instead of E (eg. Brazil gets the same points as Russia because the formula looks up Russia twice)
    - Power query only has 29 lines, the overview of has 32 but the 3 countries from group A are lost as the overview is refreshed - causing N/A in the group stage colums

    • Chandoo says:

      @Jake.. thank you. I am sorry for the errors. I could not test the live points table until the games began. I see my folly now. I have fixed both issues and uploaded a new file. As the points table relies on a wikipedia page, if someone decides to change the layout or rename a column it can seriously harm this template. I took some precautions in the Power Query layer to adjust column names dynamically etc, but it is not foolproof.

      Try downloading the newer version and let me know if you see something funny.

      • Jake says:

        No worries!
        Was able to fix the vlookup myself but the power query had me bit stumped 🙂 And wanted to give you a heads-up to everyone can enjoy it!

        Thanks for the awesome sheet!

  3. Darren G says:

    Hi,
    Thanks for sharing this world cup tracker. Certainly makes it more interesting when the data is current. As a newbie, it also helps to have a couple of mistakes to find whether unintentional or not.

    Thanks again

  4. Christian says:

    Hi,

    Your v-lookups in the "Group Stage" tab for groups E, F, G, and H (all the ones under column O) are pointing to the wrong country. They all point to column J, so whatever happens to the countries in column J will also be reflected for the countries in the groups in column O for that same row.
    Just thought I'd call that out. Thanks for the great work on this!

    • Chandoo says:

      @Christian... Thanks for trying this and letting me know about lookups. I have fixed the issue now. Please download latest version for that and few more fixes.

  5. Sheeloo says:

    Refresh All did not work correctly. Team names vanished though points were updated.

    • Chandoo says:

      @Sheeloo... Can you please try with latest version (download again using above links). I tested up to latest Iran's stunning win over Morocco and it works.

  6. Gsm says:

    Dear Chandoo

    Thanks a lot for this worksheet.

    However, while refreshing the data, I am getting error message as "Initialisation of Data Source failed".

    • Chandoo says:

      May I know what version of Excel you are using? Do you have internet connectivity? If you are familiar with Power Query, try tracing the steps in the query editor. And oh, first start with the latest version of file (link above).

  7. Andy F says:

    @Etienne - yes. Copy row, paste formats will do it, although obviously that will bring the formats of every cell in the row as well as the height.

  8. Rob Tsintas says:

    Latest version seems to be working well.

    One request: the Groups & Points tables on the Group Stage sheet have the team names pre-entered. This means they don't get sorted according to the results.
    On my copy, I've changed them to a lookup, so they appear in the same order as the points table. It would be good if you can do the same if/when you release a new update!

    Here's what I did. It's not the most elegant, but it works, and I didn't have much time to spend on it!

    Using helper values of 1,2,3,4 in columns I and N for each group, the formula for the first team name in group A (cell J4) is:

    =INDEX(points[Team],MATCH(OFFSET(J4,-(I4),0),points[Group],0)+(I4-1))

    This can be copied & pasted to the other team name cells.

    Cheers!

    • Chandoo says:

      Good suggestion. I have made changes to the points table to remove lookups and just show teams in the order they appear in the detailed table. This way, You will see top two teams on first two rows. We could highlight them as well (figured this would make it look like a bowl of M&Ms, so didn't bother) or highlight *YOUR* team.

  9. Paige says:

    I consider my Excel skills as above average but far from guru and I love how your little projects like this get me to look at data in a new way. I would like to expand on the data in the points table through the use of some calculations but I am a little challenged by the data coming across as text. The Pts column is easy to deal with, but I'm having problems with the GD. The negative goal differential looks like it may be noted with an en dash instead of a minus sign, but if I search for an en dash in the data Excel doesn't find any. I would like to include conversion to a minus sign in my little macro so I can get everything to numbers but so far I am not having any luck. Any thoughts? Thanks for your help.

    • Chandoo says:

      Thanks for such kind words 🙂

      I suggest adding an extra step in Power Query to convert points, GD & other columns to numbers. You can replace em dash in PQ. I did not do it as this will add another layer of dependency and should the wikipedia page change, one more reason for the query to fail.

  10. Petros says:

    As always, an awesome spreadsheet from Chandoo. I love the Power Query score update without macros. The country watch-out is a unique feature as well!

    For those who like a predictor template with flag lookup and a ribbon UI, here is our spreadsheet:

    https://www.spreadsheet1.com/fifa-world-cup-2018-russia-free-prediction-templates-for-excel.html

  11. Pranav says:

    Great template!

    I came across another one with image vlookups for country flags

    https://eexcel.co.uk/downloads (World_Cup_2018_Sweepstake.xlsx)

  12. Sean says:

    This is a great Template.
    I am running Excel 2010 with the PowerQuery add-in running.
    The scores will not update, so I followed the error and the second operation (Fitlered rows) says that the table is empty.
    After a few minutes on Wikipedia, I realise that my PowerQuery skills are not good enough to work out what the issue is.
    Any suggestions?
    I would like to fix it myself is possible.
    Thanks,
    Sean.

  13. Juan Pablo Diez says:

    Where can I see the results for a specific match?

    Thanks!

    • Chandoo says:

      @Juan... You can now. I have included a results tab that shows match scores. This too is a live table. Just refresh data to get new results. Please download latest version file from links above to use this feature.

      PS: There is another version coming soon with all goals too. I just have to spend some more time polishing the Json to table Power Query thingie.

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