Forum Discussion
Columns in bar chart getting cut off
The spacing and padding in Power BI charts is atrocious. Why can we not customize this more? No matter what i do, this chart looks extremely ugly. The spacing and padding makes no sense. Here you can see the outside bars are cut off on either side:
If i adjust the widths so they aren't cut off, there's a ridiculous amount of blank space in the middle of the chart:
I absolutely hate how this looks, because the y-axis labels are directly next to the left bar, and there's no option to move or add padding to anything. All the wasted space in the middle of the graph. Are there any other options to make this look better at all? When will they add more options to this?
Hi cbirch,
Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum and for sharing the screenshots. Also, thanks to MasonMA, for his inputs on this thread.
You are right that now the spacing and padding options in Power BI visuals are quite limited compared to what you would expect in tools like Excel. That is why you are seeing the outside bars get cut off if the padding is too tight, or a lot of wasted space if you increase it. A couple of workarounds that may help in the meantime.
Switch your X-axis to Continuous and adjust the range: Since your categories are years, you can set the axis type to Continuous and extend the minimum/maximum range slightly (e.g., 2022.5 to 2025.5). This gives the edge bars breathing room without blowing up the gaps in the middle.Add padding categories: Another option is to create a simple Year dimension that includes one “padding” category before the first year and after the last year. You can make the measure return blank for those padding rows, so they do not render, but the chart still leaves space on either side.
Hope this helps clarify things and let me know what you find after giving these steps a try happy to help you investigate this further.
Thank you for using the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.
2 Replies
v-kpoloju-msftCommunity Support
Hi cbirch,
Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum and for sharing the screenshots. Also, thanks to MasonMA, for his inputs on this thread.
You are right that now the spacing and padding options in Power BI visuals are quite limited compared to what you would expect in tools like Excel. That is why you are seeing the outside bars get cut off if the padding is too tight, or a lot of wasted space if you increase it. A couple of workarounds that may help in the meantime.
Switch your X-axis to Continuous and adjust the range: Since your categories are years, you can set the axis type to Continuous and extend the minimum/maximum range slightly (e.g., 2022.5 to 2025.5). This gives the edge bars breathing room without blowing up the gaps in the middle.Add padding categories: Another option is to create a simple Year dimension that includes one “padding” category before the first year and after the last year. You can make the measure return blank for those padding rows, so they do not render, but the chart still leaves space on either side.
Hope this helps clarify things and let me know what you find after giving these steps a try happy to help you investigate this further.
Thank you for using the Microsoft Fabric Community Forum.
