Pie chart as legend not showing in web visualization

[WilkerFRL94]

Hello!

I used to apply this little trick of using a pie chart with only the legends shown to act as a page-wide legend to all my visuals shown. Here is an example:

To explain, i have all those graphs with different measures, which are results for different models. So instead of enabling the legend inside one of them due to size limitations, i'd add a pie chart with it that goes along the page width, to further improve the data reading for the report consumers.

Not only for visual appeal, this solution also provides quick filtering for the selected data since we could select the models we wanted to display - we have slicers to select what is shown, but they take a little more time, while selecting stuff straight from the "legend" is faster and keeps the audience looking at the data.

Well, today i saw my legends were gone. Last time i used them was friday, and they were fine (i use them on daily meetings) and my first thought was a field could be broken or an update on field interactions had disabled it. There's just an empty visual in there. It will show up again if i add anything to the value field, which i didn't use cause it would then show the graph again when i didn't need it, or shrink the legend to accomodate the visual. Doing this seems to work, but i'm still testing if it ain't gonna bring the pie chart itself again.

When i open the report in the Desktop app, it shows as it was - and i made sure to update it to the latest version as well, and the legends were displayed as well. But at the online app it doesn't show - i've tried reuploading it with both unupgraded and upgraded desktop app, none of them worked.

My guess is that since this trick is done with an empty pie chart - using only the legend - web app included a new optimization policy to keep visuals as blank if no value is shown. 

That said, i'm reaching out here to either check what happened to this solution, if there's any other solution like a custom visual for page wise legends - and i'll add that using a graph "behind" all the one's ain't a good solution cause it will be pulled to the front if users interact with it, and i cant set a fixed legend cause the data is dynamic and i want it to be interactive with the visuals - or if that is a side-effect from a new feature and if there's the possibility of enabling it back on the online app again.

I also provided example of usage in the suggestion forum, asking for a page legend that interacts with every element (as long as the user provides the same field for every visual, obviously). 

That's it, thank y'all in advance!

[rohit1991]

Hi @WilkerFRL94 

It does appear that the issue you're facing is likely due to a recent optimization in Power BI Service that suppresses visuals without assigned value fields, which affects your clever workaround of using an empty pie chart solely to display interactive legends.

While this approach continues to work in Power BI Desktop, the Service now seems to treat these visuals as inactive or redundant and hides them altogether—possibly to improve performance or reduce unused rendering. As a workaround, you can try adding a static measure (like a dummy count or constant) to the value field to force the pie chart to render, then format it to minimize or hide the chart itself while keeping the legend visible.

Alternatively, you might explore custom visuals like “Smart Legend” from AppSource that support interactivity and page-level consistency, provided your environment allows external visuals. Since your use case highlights a real gap in Power BI’s native functionality, it’s worth submitting feedback or voting on your suggestion in the Power BI Ideas portal to encourage Microsoft to support dynamic, interactive legends more robustly. You may also consider opening a support ticket to confirm whether this change was intentional and if any toggle or workaround exists on the service side.

[v-hjannapu · Accepted solution]

Hi @WilkerFRL94 ,

Thank you  for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.

When using a pie chart without a value field, it may give correctly in Power BI Desktop showing just the legend, but in the Power BI service, the visual doesn’t display at all. This happens because the service version of Power BI requires at least one measure in the Values field to render the visual including the legend.
To achieve a similar result, you can add a value like Result to the Values field in the pie chart. Then, format the pie chart to minimize the slice display . while keeping the legend visible and interactive. This way, it still acts like a clickable legend for filtering the other visuals on the page.

For you reference  find the attached Screenshot and Pbix File

If I misunderstand your needs or you still have problems on it, please feel free to let us know.  
If the response has addressed your query, please Accept it as a solution and give a 'Kudos' so other members can easily find it.

Best Regards,
Harshitha.
Community Support Team

[v-hjannapu]

Hi @WilkerFRL94 ,

Just wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the suggestion provided?

If the response has addressed your query, please Accept it as a solution and give a 'Kudos' so other members can easily find it.

Regards,

Harshitha.

[v-hjannapu]

Hi @WilkerFRL94,

I wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the information provided. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions. If my response has addressed your query, please Accept it as a solution so that other community members can find it easily.

Thank you.

[v-hjannapu]

Hi @WilkerFRL94 ,

May I ask if you have resolved this issue? If so, please mark the helpful reply and Accept it as the solution. This will be helpful for other community members who have similar problems to solve it faster.

Thank you.