Hiding column headers in Power BI Table and Power BI Matrix Visuals is not as obvious as you would think. We look at a couple of workarounds that are quick to deploy and will clean up the way your dashboard or report are presented.
There is No Option to Hide Column Headers in Power BI Visuals
The obvious way to turn off column headers in a Power BI table or matrix would be to search for the option under the Format Your Visual section of the Power BI options panel. Unfortunately, at the time of writing is there is now ay to turn off column headers for a table or a matrix in Power BI.
The screenshot below shows the current visual format options available.
How to Hide Power BI Column Headers
Instead of turning off Power BI Column Headers in a Table or Matrix visual, you can either adjust the font color of the headers to match the background, or change the name of each one of your fields to a space. A space will technically still be a character but in most cases it will make the header of a visual look blank.
The following screenshot is the before and after of a Menu Item column in a table visual that has had the measure name updated from Menu Item to a Space. You will see that the Menu Item column looks like it has no header.
You can perform this same technique for all of your columns. It works on the table visual and matrix visual. By changing the measure name to a space, you can selectively update each column individually.
To update a column name to a space, you can double click on the Column Name from the Build Visual panel on the right side of Power BI. This lets you normally rename a column to whatever you need, and in this case we replace the text with a single space.
From here, you can update all of your columns to a space and it will appear as if your table has hidden column headers.
Don’t worry about renaming your columns to something you won’t be able to work with later. This only changes the field name for that specific visual. The measures still retain the appropriate name under the Data View in Power BI.
If you mouse over the replaced column name, you will see a tooltip that shows you what the initial column name or measure name was.
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Updating Column Text Color To Hide Column Headers
If you are working with a lot of columns or want to make the report more dynamic, rather than updating each individual field to a space to hide the column name, you can also change the column text to match the background of the report.
This will retain the column names for you to work with further, but will look like they are hidden to the end user when you publish a report.
You can update a table or matrix visual column header color under the Format Visual side bar under Column Headers and Text.
If you are using a custom background color and need to custom select it, we recommend using the color picker widget that’s available as part of Microsoft Power Toys It will breakdown the formula for a color that you select, making it easier to match to a custom background.
Conclusion
While Power BI does not give users a built in option to disable headers on a table visual or a matrix visual there are a number of creative workarounds to adjust the formatting of your report. You can change titles to an invisible character like a space, change the font color, or layer another visual over the top of the headers of a layer below it.
We hope Microsoft will update Power BI to enable users to hide title visibility, but until then these Power BI tips and tricks should help!