Button size changes randomly

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I have many buttons in a report, the idea is to use them to navigate the report, and trigger visual changes by the use of bookmarks. When i say button, i mean a rectangle shape with text and an action assigned to call a bookmark.

The button height i'm using for them is below the minimum, there's a message saying "The number is too low" in the general properties of the button if you hover over it, even though the text within has ample margin to be properly seen inside.

The height value i want to use is 30. I can't type in this number and expect the button to follow this instruction, it won't because the minimum it would accept is (for whatever the reason) 46.

Before the latest update (second of august 2018) i could resize it by using the mouse, not without a lot of patience to set it at the desired height, i must say. Now if i try to resize it with the mouse, it automatically sets itself at a height of 46, not allowing me to go lower.

In combination with this, sometimes the height value appears to change by itself. Maybe due to an accidental click, maybe completely by itself when setting up something else, or maybe just using the button. As i said, i'm using all buttons with the same height, but every now and then, one of these values (position, width or height) changes.

Currently, i have one button (rectangle shape) that has had its height "magically" changed from 30 to 31, causing a missalignment with the buttons that are close to it. I think this shouldn't happen, but anyway now I can't solve this in a simple and quick way:

• If i enter the value 30 in height it does nothing.
• If i try resizing with the mouse, it resets the height to 46, not allowing me to go lower.
• If i copy another button with the right size (30), i'll have to manually set each and every button property again (fill, action, text, you name it)

It's quite annoying to deal with these kind of issues, furthermore if you have many of those buttons.

It's also quite annoying to try to balance the appearance of buttons and slicers or chiclet slicers, because:

1. The measures don't seem to use the same unit (to make them look alike, i have to set button height = 30, chiclet height = 36)
2. Cliclet slicers or slicers have a marquee while rectangle shapes don't, so these can't be aligned using "Format->Align".

Please:

1. Allow us to specify whatever numbers we want in shapes to specify height or width, if we want to go below the limit, we'll do at our own risk.
2. Don't allow these values to change due to accidental clicks. Maybe adding a button to "lock size" on a visual level would help.

Thanks for reading.

PS: Why is the "General" tab on the visuals pane, randomly on top of the list (examples: stacked bar chart, stacked column chart...), randomly at the end of the list (examples: waterfall chart, pie chart...)?

[v-qiuyu-msft]

Hi @Anonymous,

1. You can turn off below option, then you should be able to decrease button height to 20. 

For more information, you can see this similar thread: https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/Height-of-visuals-shapes-buttons-isn-t-configurable-after-july/idc-p/492247#M30824

2. You can vote on this same idea: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/11344953-ability-to-lock-unlock-edditing-of-visualizations

Best Regards,
Qiuyun Yu 

[Anonymous]

Hi @v-qiuyu-msft,

Thanks for your reply.

However, it is not enough. I need both things, to use the modern headers (it's been long awaited) and to have the ability to resize shapes to whatever i need.

I don't think having to sacrifice one of them is a proper solution.

Some more things, now that i have your attention:

1) In the Desktop app, the visual header configuration seems to do nothing, at least using the show/hide buttons. I can change transparency, i can change the colors, but if i set the focus mode icon or the more options icon to off, they keep being shown no matter what. The same happens if i turn the whole visual header off: nothing, it's still shown.

2) What's the purpose of having the same options for any element? I mean, shapes, lines, etc, still have visual options such as "Spotlight" or "More options". I don't think anyone would ever want to put a shape or a line in focus mode. (If i'm not mistaken, focus mode is no longer available in the last update). Lines and shapes shouldn't even have a marquee (Shapes don't anymore, but lines still have it)

3) Imagine you have 3 shapes, turned to buttons by setting up an action such as a bookmark. Those are triggered by using ctrl + click. Now imagine you need to select all three to have them aligned and distributed. To select all three, you'd also need to use ctrl + click. Now imagine how dificult it is to select the three buttons without triggering the action... It would be great if we could either use shift key to add selections or use the mouse to draw a shape and select all three at once (as has been done historically in virtually any app such as powerpoint).

Thanks a lot for your time and attention, best regards.

[polymathy2017]

@Anonymous A little tact and a whole lot of brevity goes a long way. Hopefully, you've acquired those skills by now. If it's changing randomly, it's user error.