How to Insert Images in Power BI (Step-by-Step)

In Power BI, you can insert an image directly into a report page or as part of a table, matrix, or slicer visual.

Inserting an image to a report page is as easy as pressing a button.

On the other hand, displaying an image in a visual may seem a bit complicated.

But once you get the hang of it, you’ll realize it’s not as hard as it seems.

To insert an image directly on a report page, you will need Power BI Desktop and your image to be stored in your local drive.

Let’s say we’re creating a report about Microsoft Excel and that we would like to insert Excel’s logo.

First, click ‘Image’ on the ribbon.

It looks smaller than the rest so it may be hard to find at first.

Then, find and open your image.

Immediately, your image will appear on the canvas.

Awesome! 😁

Images inserted in this manner functions as a visual tile.

To show images in visuals, you would need their URL.

Basically, it would be like your embedding the images on visuals.

That’s why this won’t work if you’re offline.

To start, add a column in your table where the URL or links of the images will be placed.

You can either prepare beforehand by adding the column on a spreadsheet before importing it to Power BI.

Or, if your dataset is on Power BI already, you can simply add that column.

For example, here’s a table made in Power BI which has two columns viewed in data view:

• Icons
• URL

The next step is to make sure the data category in that column is in ‘Image URL’.

Make sure you’re on the data view. Then, follow these steps:

• Click the column header (URL)
• Click ‘Modeling’ from the tab list

Next, click ‘Data Category’ on the ribbon.

Then, choose ‘Image URL’ from the list.

Once that is done, everything is now ready.

Head over to the report editor.

Select ‘Table’ from the visualizations.

Then, select the relevant columns of the table that has the image URL.

When inserting images in Power BI, there are a few considerations you have to take.

First is the file format of the images.

As of now, Power BI only supports:

• BMP
• JPG
• JPEG
• GIF
• PNG
• SVG

Other than that, Power BI will not be able to read and embed the image.

Next is the URL. Obviously, it needs to be accessible without the need for login credentials.

If it’s stored in a place where the user has to sign-in or log in, Power BI will not be able to get the images.

Using images in Power BI is a great way to brand your reports. At the same time, it might also help in making your visuals more understandable, relatable, or look nicer.