Visualization pane keeps resetting when switching between visuals

[BITomS]

Hi there,

I've been using PBI for a while now and it seems like some UX has degraded after a recent update. Previously, when working on a report with multiple visuals of the same type, I could open 'format visual' and go to 'general' > 'properties' (to play around with layout and positioning) and then select another visual of the same type that would also be open on the same menu (i.e. Format Visual > General > properties).

Now, it seems that when I select another visual, the visualization pane reverts to 'Format Visual > Visual' instead, which means I have to keep reselecting 'General > Properties' when doing this rather fiddly layout piece, which doesn't translate well to a user experience.

FYI, I am UK based. Please may you look into this?

[Anonymous]

Hi  @BITomS 

I tested the issue you describe on Service and Desktop, and currently switching visual is causing the Visualization pane to reset.Thank you very much for your feedback. 

Regarding the inconvenience of use, you can vote the idea and comment there to improve this feature. It is a place for customers provide feedback about Microsoft Office products . What’s more, if a feedback is high voted there by other customers, it will be promising that Microsoft Product Team will take it into consideration when designing the next version in the future.

Best Regards,
Community Support Team _ Ailsa Tao

[BITomS]

@Anonymous I appreciate you pointing me in the direction of the ideas page, but to clarify, this was not the default behaviour in PBI about a month ago. Something has changed for the app to respond in this way. Therefore, it is not a 'new' idea. This request is to revert the bahviour to how it was.

[k_user]

I too am a long time user and very frustrated with this change.  Not user friendly at all and slows down my productivity when creating new reports by a huge margin. 

However, I did find a workaround... switch to the new preview feature On Object Interaction which disables the whole visualization pane (stick with me here) replacing with the new "Plane Switcher".  Now, click and add all the "panes" you would want... shows as icons on the right of the pane switcher.  NOW, right-click on the Selection icon and select "open in new pane", then switch to format pane.  So you'll now have 2 panes open, the Selection pane on left, and Format pane to the right of that.  Now switching between objects goes back to the old functionality... no more resetting... until of course the UI developers decide to do a forced reset on us again   🙂    But this has taught me NOT to update my Power BI unless I absolutlely must.

[BITomS]

@k_user I was not aware of this preview feature, so have followed your steps and it works like a charm, thank you very much, it's most appreciated!

MS are obviously putting their efforts into this new layout as I can see how it will improve UI and productivity going forward (I actually quite like it), so imagine this is MS's way of coaxing people toward the new style.

Wish I could give you kudos for your post like in the get help community section, but thanks again all the same.

[k_user]

Glad I could help.  I came across your post hoping it would provide an ETA of when they would fix the original issue, but it seemed like they didn't even understand what we are complaining about.

This workaround is nice, but still a bit quirky.  I like how they grouped size and pos into the format, so it actually makes that part much nicer.  However, it still resets if you are on the properties tab of format, and sometimes depending on what you click on, it completely wipes out all the panes.  So hopefully they will have a feature to allow us to choose what panes to persist and leave up.  Imagine that... letting the user decide what works best for themselves   🙂

[joannm]

OMG @k_user you just saved me from carpal tunnel surgery. No joke. I recently had to revise the entire layout of a dash with several visuals on several pages and the amount of clicks was going to destroy my mouse hand.

Come on MS, you need better QA than this.