Conditionally formatting a percent of grand total column in Power BI

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Conditionally formatting a Percent of grand total column in Power BI
Although Power BI allows you to display values as a percent of the grand total, you can't conditionally format this directly. Fortunately, you can use a measure to solve the problem.

Posted by Rick Gould on 22 October 2024

Power BI allows you to display your results as a percentage of the grand total using the Show value as option in a field's drop down menu.

Here the run time minutes are being displayed as a percentage of the overall total run time.

Unfortunately, if you try to conditionally format this column, the percent grand total field won't appear as an option in the list and conditional formats using any other fields may not be applied accurately.

The field we based our percent grand total column on is available but not the one with the values that we want to conditionally format.

If you want a percent of grand total column that you can conditionally format, you first need to create it as a measure.

Right click on the table you want to create the measure in and choose New measure.

This option will open the formula toolbar underneath the ribbon.

Enter a name for the measure followed by the formula to calculate the value as a percentage of the grand total.

The Divide function helps avoid errors caused from dividing by 0.

Format the measure as a percentage using the Measure tools tab on the ribbon and add it to the visual.

If the last column hadn't been formatted as a percentage, it would be displaying as a decimal number.

Finally, apply conditional formatting from the Columns field well and you will be able to base the conditional formatting on the measure that you created.