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New features in the April 2023 Power BI update Part two of a three-part series of blogs
Modern visual tooltips are still officially in preview, but since they're turned on by default we've included them in this update. The update also includes composite models, some new DAX functions and a small change to PowerPoint story styling, but it's the big beasts lined up in preview which are (as always) the real story. New features in the April 2023 Power BI update Modern visual tooltips (this blog) Other changes introduced in the April 2023 update We've been creating our idiosyncratic monthly blogs on Power BI updates since November 2016, and also deliver online and classroom Power BI courses.

New features in the April 2023 Power BI update

Part two of a three-part series of blogs

Modern visual tooltips are still officially in preview, but since they're turned on by default we've included them in this update. The update also includes composite models, some new DAX functions and a small change to PowerPoint story styling, but it's the big beasts lined up in preview which are (as always) the real story.

New features in the April 2023 Power BI update
Modern visual tooltips (this blog)
Other changes introduced in the April 2023 update

We've been creating our idiosyncratic monthly blogs on Power BI updates since November 2016, and also deliver online and classroom Power BI courses.

Posted by Andy Brown on 27 April 2023

In this blog

Turning on modern tooltips
Modern visual tooltips can be initially underwhelming
Modern tooltips and drill-through

Modern visual tooltips

Modern visual tooltips are still in preview, but are now turned on by default:

Modern visual tooltips incorporate the theme of a report, and also make drill-through easier.

Note that modern visual tooltips are only turned on by default in Power BI Desktop for new reports; for existing reports you'll have to manually enable them via Power BI options.

This blog explains how to show modern visual tooltips, and why initially they might not seem to exist!

Turning on modern tooltips

First things first: you might like to turn this feature on officially. To do this, go to the Power BI options dialog box:

Choose Options and settings from the File menu, then Options.

You can then check that this feature is turned on (but it should be by default for new reports anyway):

Select the options shown to turn on modern visual tooltips (but they should be ticked anyway).

Modern visual tooltips can be initially underwhelming

For a long time I assumed that I hadn't properly enabled this feature:

This tooltip doesn't look that modern to me!

However things get more promising when you apply a theme:

You can click on this drop arrow in the View menu to apply a theme.

Having applied a custom theme, the tooltip suddenly looks more promising:

Modern tooltips take on the appearance of your report theme.

Modern tooltips and drill-through

It's drill-through which really makes modern tooltips worth having. Suppose you create another page to drill-through to:

I've created another page called By town showing a list of towns, and specified that anyone can drill through to this by clicking on a region.

When I go back to my chart of sales by region, initially nothing changes:

The tooltip as it first appears.

But after a half-second or so, this appears:

I can now click on this to drill-through to show sales for the town in this region.

Microsoft have been trying to create an obvious and intuitive way of drilling through to a lower level of detail for some time. The drill-through button was one solution, but modern visual tooltips seem to offer a much better one.