Table Headers Reference
Overview
Table Headers controls how column and row header levels look — background, font, an optional logo, and (for row headers) the overall layout. It replaces CrossTable's fixed, level-capped settings (Column Logo Lv1/Lv2/Lv3/Row Logo Lv1/Lv2 data roles, Top-Level/Sub-Level Column Header, Row header format — see Logos in Headers and Custom Element Formatting, which still describe CrossTable's own mechanism) with two schema-driven editors — Column Headers and Row Headers — each managing an open-ended list of per-level presentation blocks.
This page describes a mechanism that only exists in CrossTable InCell Charts. CrossTable itself still uses the fixed level-suffixed settings and dedicated logo data roles documented under Logos in Headers and Custom Element Formatting.
See the Header Logos tutorial for a full, click-by-click walkthrough — from base64-encoding your images to wiring a CONCATENATEX measure into the Header logos lookup.
Location: Format pane → Table Headers card, holding two JSON text fields (Column headers, Row headers) managed through their own ⚙ gear icons, plus a Header logos field with its own ⚙. The gear icons appear at the top-right of the visual in the report's Edit view.
The ⚙ editors — Column Headers / Row Headers
Click the 🏛️ icon (Column Headers) or 📝 icon (Row Headers) to open the editor. Each opens the same schema-driven dialog used elsewhere in the visual (e.g. Gap Mode's column editor), with one block per header level and an Add level button:
| Editor | Levels | Cap |
|---|---|---|
| Column Headers | One block per column-header depth (Level 1 = outermost) | None — add as many levels as your column hierarchy has. |
| Row Headers | Level 1 (outer, only meaningful with 2-level row grouping) / Level 2 (inner) | 2 — row grouping never produces more than 2 row levels in this visual. |
A level with no block configured simply shows the active style theme's default — you only need to add a level to override something.
📸 Screenshot — Format pane / editor dialog tableheaders-editor-open.png — the Column Headers (or Row Headers) ⚙ editor open, showing one configured level block with its fields.
Fields (per level)
| Field | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Show this header | Toggle | On | Unchecking it hides this level's header row (columns) or column (rows) — see Hiding a header level below. All other fields for this level are hidden in the editor while it's off, since there's nothing left to style. |
| Header colors | Inherit / Custom | Inherit | Inherit lets the style theme decide this level's background and font color — the recommended default when you're only adding a level for its logo. Custom reveals Background and Font color below. |
| Background | Color | White | (Custom only) Background of every header cell at this level — including the corner cell, for Column level 1. |
| Font color | Color | Black | (Custom only) Text color at this level. |
| Font | Font family | — | Typography for this level. |
| Font size | 6–40 px | 11 | |
| Bold / Italic / Underline | Toggle | — | |
| Logo series | Measure (optional) | (none) | A measure from the Additional Series data role, providing a base64 logo image for this level. See Header logos below for the recommended, cheaper alternative. |
| Logo placement | Logo only / Logo above text / Logo under text | Logo above text | How the logo combines with the header label — no effect if no logo resolves for a given header. |
| Logo size (px) | 8–100 | 24 | Logo height at this level. |
| Row layout (Row Headers only) | Side column / Hierarchical | Side column | See Row layout: Side column vs. Hierarchical below. |
| Additional CSS | Free text (multi-line) | (empty) | Raw CSS declarations appended to this level's generated style rule — see Additional CSS below. |
Changes save back into the underlying JSON field (Column headers / Row headers) and persist with the report, like any other formatting property.
📸 Screenshot — rendered result tableheaders-logoplacement-montage.png — the same header with a logo, compared across the three Logo placement options: Logo only, Logo above text, Logo under text.
Hiding a header level
To hide a column or row header level, add a level block in the relevant ⚙ editor and uncheck "Show this header" — there's no separate on/off setting elsewhere; this field is the mechanism. A level with no block configured is always shown at its theme default, so hiding one means adding a block for it (via Add level) specifically to turn it off.
This is a genuine removal, not a CSS-level hide: the visual doesn't create that header row (columns) or column (rows) at all, rather than rendering it invisibly. That matters because a naive hide (visibility: hidden, which still reserves the space, or display: none on a single row-header cell, which shifts every cell after it out of alignment) gets either wasted whitespace or a misaligned table — neither of which happens here. The corner cell's span shrinks to match whichever levels remain.
The most common reason to do this: a row or column level whose label stopped being meaningful once merged into a grouped chart — e.g. group Awareness/Familiarity into one chart per row (Group last-level rows) and their old per-row labels no longer say anything a category-colored legend entry doesn't already say. Add a block for that row level and uncheck Show this header.
On row headers, the per-row label level and the label column used by the Base/Unweighted Base/Signif Base total rows are the same column — hiding one hides the other too, so those total rows keep the same column count as the data rows above them (a total row can't have one more column than the data rows without breaking alignment).
📸 Screenshot — rendered result tableheaders-hidelevel-before.png — a table with the redundant row level still shown (e.g. after grouping Awareness/Familiarity into one chart, the old per-row labels).
📸 Screenshot — rendered result tableheaders-hidelevel-after.png — the same table with that level's Show this header unchecked: the level is gone, corner cell span shrunk to match.
Logos on a header
Two independent sources can supply a header's logo, tried in this order — the first one that resolves for a given header label wins:
- Header logos (the lookup editor, below) — a simple label → logo map, resolved entirely inside the visual, at zero query cost.
- Logo series (the per-level field above) — a measure from the Additional Series data role.
Header logos — the lookup editor
Click the 🖼️ icon to open a small editor listing label / logo pairs — type the header's exact displayed label and paste (or bind via a DAX measure and the fx button) its base64 logo.
A measure bound through Additional Series lives in the Matrix's Values bucket, so Power BI evaluates and transmits it for every cell (row × column) — not once per header. With only a handful of distinct logos (e.g. one flag per country) repeated across thousands of cells, that can by itself push a large table into matrix truncation. The Header logos lookup has none of this cost: it's resolved once, in memory, from a small JSON list.
A convenient way to keep this list in sync with a lookup table is a DAX measure that concatenates it into JSON, bound to the Header logos (JSON) field via the fx button so it's recomputed once per report render (respecting slicers) rather than per cell:
Header Logos JSON =
"[" &
CONCATENATEX(
VALUES( Country[Label_country] ),
"{""label"":""" & Country[Label_country] & """,""logo"":""" & MAX( Country[Logo_Country] ) & """}",
","
) & "]"
See the Header Logos tutorial for the full walkthrough, from base64-encoding your images to binding this measure.
Named logo tables — more than one lookup in the same field
By default every entry in Header logos lands in one shared namespace — any level whose label matches gets that logo. If two unrelated sets of logos happen to share a label (or you'd simply rather keep them apart — e.g. country flags at one row level and brand marks at another, both produced by the same DAX measure into one JSON array), tag each entry with an optional table field:
[
{ "label": "France", "logo": "data:image/png;base64,...", "table": "countries" },
{ "label": "Brand A", "logo": "data:image/png;base64,...", "table": "brands" }
]
Entries with no table field stay in the default (untagged) namespace and keep applying automatically to any level that hasn't opted into a named table — this is fully backward compatible with a plain flat lookup.
To make a level use one named table specifically, pick it from that level's Logo series dropdown — named tables found in your Header logos JSON appear there (prefixed 🖼️), alongside the normal Additional Series measures. A level can use either a named lookup table or a Logo series measure, never both at once — picking one clears the other.
📸 Screenshot — Format pane settings tableheaders-namedtable-dropdown.png — a level's Logo series dropdown open, showing a 🖼️-prefixed named table entry alongside normal Additional Series measures.
If a level points at a named table that no longer exists in Header logos (renamed, or its entries removed), that level silently falls back to showing the plain text label — exactly as if no logo were configured — rather than erroring.
Logo series
Still useful when a logo genuinely needs to be calculated (not a fixed lookup) — pick a measure from the Additional Series data role in the Logo series field of a level. Remember its per-cell evaluation cost on large tables; scan a few rows before assuming a constant value doesn't hold, and prefer Header logos whenever the mapping is really just "one logo per category name".
Row layout: Side column vs. Hierarchical
With 2-level row grouping active (the row hierarchy has two levels — see Understanding Bases for how grouping interacts with bases), Level 1's Row layout field controls how the outer category renders:
| Layout | Rendering |
|---|---|
| Side column (default) | Level 1's label is a narrow, row-spanning first column, next to the Level 2 rows it groups — the historical behavior. |
| Hierarchical | Level 1's label becomes a full-width banner row above its group of Level 2 rows, instead of a side column. |
Side column Hierarchical
┌──────────┬────────┬─────┐ ┌──────────────────────┐
│ │ Trust │ ... │ │ Fundamentals │
│Fundamen- ├────────┼─────┤ ├──────────┬─────┬──────┤
│ tals │ Quality│ ... │ │ Trust │ ... │ │
├──────────┼────────┼─────┤ ├──────────┼─────┼──────┤
│ Crafted │ Comfort│ ... │ │ Quality │ ... │ │
│ space ├────────┼─────┤ ├──────────────────────┤
│ │ Design │ ... │ │ Crafted space │
└──────────┴────────┴─────┘ ├──────────┬─────┬──────┤
│ Comfort │ ... │ │
└──────────┴─────┴──────┘
The banner row picks up Level 1's own Background/Font/Additional CSS — style it like any other level. Combine it with Additional CSS to get, for example, a dashed border framing each section.
📸 Screenshot — rendered result tableheaders-rowlayout-sidecolumn.png — a 2-level row grouping with Level 1's Row layout set to Side column (the historical narrow first-column look).
📸 Screenshot — rendered result tableheaders-rowlayout-hierarchical.png — the same table with Hierarchical: Level 1's label as a full-width banner row above its Level 2 group.
Row layout is exposed on every row level in the editor, but only Level 1's value has an effect today — this visual currently only ever groups rows two levels deep. The per-level field is forward-looking, for a planned N-dimension version where each row level will pick its own layout independently.
Side-by-side (Table of Tables) mode and freeze panes are not specially handled for the banner row in this first version — it scrolls normally, and side-by-side mode ignores the Hierarchical setting for now.
Additional CSS
A free-text field, per level, for anything the structured fields above can't express — vertical writing, gradients, custom border styles, letter spacing, whatever your design needs. It's appended, verbatim, to the end of that level's generated CSS rule — after the structured properties, so add !important if you need to override one of them (e.g. background: linear-gradient(...) !important;).
border: 2px dashed #999999 !important;
border-radius: 6px;
📸 Screenshot — rendered result tableheaders-additionalcss-example.png — a header level styled with the CSS above: a dashed border framing that level's cells.
Any url(...) fragment is silently stripped before use — the same "no external network access" policy applied to logo images (see Logos → Security & certification) extends to this free-form field, so it can't be used to load a remote background image or font.
Troubleshooting
- A level I added a logo to lost its theme background/text color → set that level's Header colors to Inherit instead of Custom — Custom with empty Background/Font color fields defaults to white/black, overriding the theme.
- The corner cell (top-left) doesn't match Column Level 1's custom color → this is fixed; if you still see it, confirm the report is on a recent version — Column Level 1's Custom background/font now applies to the corner cell too.
- Logo doesn't show for one header, but shows for others → check both sources: does Header logos have an entry whose label matches that header's exact displayed text, and/or does the Logo series measure return a non-blank value for that header member?
- Table got slow / truncated after adding a logo → if you're using Logo series, switch to Header logos (the lookup editor) — see the cost explanation above.
- Additional CSS doesn't seem to apply → structured fields (Background, Font color…) are written with
!important; add!importantto your own declaration if it's meant to override one of them. - Row layout: Hierarchical has no effect → it only applies to Row Header Level 1, and only when the table actually has 2-level row grouping; it's currently ignored in side-by-side (Table of Tables) mode.
- I don't see an on/off switch to hide a header level → there isn't a separate one; open the relevant ⚙ editor, Add level for that level if it doesn't have a block yet, and uncheck Show this header — see Hiding a header level.