Cartouche
The Cartouche card draws a free text overlay on top of the chart — a source note, a methodology caveat, a filter reminder, a copyright line. The text is anchored to one of six positions around the plot area and can be driven by a measure through fx, so it can react to the current filter context.
The card sits near the bottom of the Format pane, just above License.
Show
| Property | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Show | Master toggle for the whole card | Off |
Nothing is drawn when the toggle is off, or when the text is empty or contains only whitespace.
Content
| Property | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Text | The text to display — multiline, fx-bindable | (empty) |
The field is a multi-line text area. Line breaks you type are honoured: each one starts a new line in the chart, at a line height of 1.25 × the font size.
The cartouche never wraps text by itself and is not clipped to the plot area. A long single line will run past the edge of the visual. Insert your own line breaks to control the block width.
Binding the text to a measure
The Text property accepts a conditional-formatting rule, so you can click the fx button next to it and bind it to a measure. This is the usual way to build a dynamic footnote:
Cartouche Note =
VAR NbRespondents = SUM(Survey[Base])
VAR Period = SELECTEDVALUE(Calendar[PeriodLabel], "all periods")
RETURN
"Source: internal panel — " & Period &
UNICHAR(10) &
"Base: " & FORMAT(NbRespondents, "#,##0") & " respondents"
UNICHAR(10) inserts a line break, which the cartouche renders as a real second line.
Format
| Property | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Font | Font family | Segoe UI |
| Text Size | Font size in pixels (fx-bindable) | 12 |
| Bold / Italic / Underline | Text style toggles | Off |
| Color | Text color | #333333 |
| Text Alignment | Left, Center, Right | Left |
| Position | Top Left, Top Center, Top Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Center, Bottom Right | Top Left |
Position vs. Text Alignment
These two properties do different things and are meant to be combined.
- Position picks the anchor point: which edge of the plot rectangle the text block is pinned
to. The anchor is inset by 6 pixels from the plot rectangle on every side. A
Top…position puts the first line just below the top of the plot area; aBottom…position puts the last line just above the bottom, so a multi-line block grows upwards. - Text Alignment picks how the text hangs off that anchor: to the right of it (Left), centred on it (Center), or to the left of it (Right).
The combination you almost always want is a matching pair — Top Left + Left, or
Bottom Right + Right — which keeps the block inside the plot area. Mismatched pairs are allowed
and useful for special cases: Top Center + Left, for instance, starts the block at the middle of
the chart and extends it to the right, giving a left-aligned note in the right half of the visual.
The cartouche is an overlay painted on the root SVG, above every other layer — lines, markers, data labels and analytics lines all pass underneath it. Position it over an empty corner of the plot, or give the chart some breathing room, so it does not sit on top of your data.