3.6. Data label customizations

How to Customize Data Labels in Visualizations: A Step-by-Step Guide

You can determine the number of data labels to display in your charts and customize the appearance of the data labels from the settings side pane. You can also configure a percentage to display outlier values. Let's look at these options in detail.

Data label settings can vary based on the chart type.

The Value/Measure name toggle needs to be enabled to display data labels.

Data labels

1. Value display

You can define the number of data labels to render from options like All, None, Min+Max, First+Last, Nth label, etc. For Nth label, an additional Interval option is enabled. You can specify the interval between displaying labels. In the example, we've assigned an interval of 3, which means every 3rd bar will have a data label.

Data labels will not be displayed if the data categories are too close to each other and the data label cannot fit in the available space.

Data label display options

2. Outliers

You can display the data points that deviate from the overall trend or average value by selecting the outlier option. Use the Outlier percentage textbox to define a threshold for an outlier based on percentage deviation i.e. if the difference between two consecutive data labels is more than the specified threshold, the point will be plotted as an outlier. You can also choose a color to highlight the outlier values - in this example, we have highlighted the outliers in red.

Outliers for charts

3. Options

• Orientation

When the data labels are rendered inside the bars, you can specify the orientation.

0 degrees orientation

-90 degrees orientation

+90 degrees orientation

• Allow overlap

Enable this option to display data labels even if they overlap each other.

Allow overlap disabled

Allow overlap enabled

• Allow overflow

Enable this option to display data labels even if they exceed the allotted space.

Data labels are displayed when Allow Overflow is enabled

Data labels are hidden when Allow Overflow is disabled

• Match series color

Enable the Match series color toggle for the data label colors to be coordinated with the series colors.

Match series color

• Bar overlap

When the bar overlap option is enabled, data labels will dynamically be plotted inside the bars on canvas resize, thus giving maximum space on the canvas to plot the chart. In the combo chart, notice how some of the Sales data points are displayed inside the bar.

Bar overlap

4. Label type

Select the measures for which to render data labels. You can display tooltip measures along with the data labels by selecting the measures from the dropdown.

Label type

• Position

You can set the position of the data labels with respect to the chart. You can choose from options like Outside, Inside - Top, Inside - Center, Inside - Bottom.

This option only applies to bar charts.

Data label position

• Font

  You can set a custom font color, specify the size, and whether the font should be bold/italicized.

Custom font colors are enabled only when the Contrast color option is disabled.

Setting the data label font

5. Contrast color

Enabling this property ensures that the data label color contrasts the chart color and the data labels are clearly visible. The label color is set to black when this property is disabled.

The contrast color option can be enabled only when Display settings > Canvas > Auto color is turned off. When auto color is enabled, the font color is automatically set to contrast with the background.

Contrast color enabled

Contrast color disabled

6. Vertical offset

You can configure the offset position of the data labels. Positive offsets will move the label downwards and negative offsets will move it upwards.

Offsets can be in the range of -100 to 100.

Negative offset

Positive offset

7. Horizontal offset

Similar to the vertical offset, you can also position the data labels horizontally (depending on the chart type).

8. Background

You can assign a background color for data labels. We have set the background color to grey in the example.

Background color for data labels

9. Individual measure settings

You can tailor the data labels for each measure when you plot line charts. Notice how the data labels for each of the measures is rendered based on the individual configurations.

Individual measure configurations for data labels

10. Variance

When you have charts that depict a variance, enable the Variance toggle to see data labels for variances. The customization options for variance data labels are identical to regular data labels.

Variance data labels