To enable the report editor, select a User Report then select Edit.

The Compose report editor is divided into several main sections:

1. Horizontal toolbar
2. Report canvas
3. Filters pane
4. Visualizations pane
5. Fields pane

1. Horizontal toolbar

Add text boxes, shapes, buttons and visual interactions to your report pages from the horizontal toolbar above your canvas.

2. The report canvas

The report canvas is where your work displays. When you use the Fields, Filters, and Visualizations panes to create visuals, they are built and displayed on your report canvas. Each tab at the bottom of the canvas represents a page in the report. Select a tab to open that page.

The report editor panes

Three panes are visible when you first open a report: Filters, Visualizations, and Fields. The first two panes on the left, Filters and Visualizations, control what your visualizations look like: type, colors, filtering, and formatting. The last pane on the right, Fields, manages the underlying data being used in the visualizations. The content displayed in the report editor varies by selections you make in the report canvas.

For example, when you select an individual visual such as this donut chart:

• The Filters pane displays any filters on the visual, the page, or on all pages. In this case, there are visual-level filters and filters on all pages, but no filters specific to this page.
• The top of the Visualization pane identifies the type of visual in use. In this example, it is a Donut chart.
• The bottom of the Visualization pane has three tabs:

The Fields tab displays the fields in the visual. You may have to scroll down to see all the details. 

The Format tab is where you update how a visualization appears. To display the format pane for the selected visualization, select the Paint Roller icon.

The Analytics tab is where you can add dynamic reference lines to visualizations, and provide focus for important trends or insights. To display the Analytics tab, select the Magnifying Glass icon.

• The Fields pane lists all the available tables in the data model. When you expand a table, you see a list of the fields in that table. The yellow check mark lets you know that at least one field from that table is in a visualization.

You can expand and collapse the Filters, Visualizations, and Fields panes by selecting the arrows at the tops of the panes. Collapsing the panes provides more space on the canvas to build cool visualizations.

Read on for details about each pane.

3. The Filters pane

Use the Filters pane to view, set, and modify persistent filters to your reports at the page, report, drill through, and visual level. You can do ad-hoc filtering on report pages and visuals by selecting elements of the visuals or by using tools like slicers. However, filtering in the Filters pane has the advantage that the state of the filters is saved with the report.

The Filters pane has another powerful feature: you can filter using a field that isn't already in one of the visuals in your report. Let me explain. When you create a visualization, Compose automatically adds all the fields in the visualization to the visual-level filters area of the Filters pane. If you want to set a visual, page, drill through, or report filter using a field that isn't currently used in the visualization, just drag it to one of the Filters buckets.

4. The Visualizations pane

The visualizations pane has four sections. We'll start at the top of the pane.

Here's where you select a visualization type. The small icons show the different types of visualizations you can create. In the image above, the Donut chart is selected. If you start building a visualization by selecting fields without selecting a visualization type first, Compose picks the visualization type for you. You can keep Compose's selection, or change the type by selecting a different icon.

Manage the fields in a visualization on the Fields tab

The buckets (sometimes called wells) in this tab vary depending on the type of visualization you've selected. For example, if you've selected a bar chart, you see Axis, Legend, and Values. When you select a Donut chart like above, you only see Legend and Values.

When you select a field or drag it onto the canvas, Compose adds that field to one of the buckets. You can also drag fields from the Fields list directly into the buckets. Some buckets are limited to certain types of data. For example, Values won't accept non-numeric fields. So if you drag a Category field into the Values bucket, Compose changes it to Count of Category.

For more information, see Add visualizations to a report.

This tab also has options to control drill through and filter behavior.

Format your visuals

Select the Paint Roller icon to display the Format tab. The options available depend on the type of visualization selected.

The formatting possibilities are extensive. To learn more, visit these articles:

• Customizing visualization title, background, and legend
• Color formatting
• Customizing X-axis and Y-axis properties

Format your page

To configure page information (page name, enable/disable tooltips and Q&A), page size, background, and alignment, and other page information, select the Format icon with no visualization selected.

Add analytics to your visualizations

Select the magnifying glass icon to display the Analytics tab. The options available depend on the type of visualization selected. 

Not all visuals have analytics features available, as seen below.

With the Analytics pane, you can add dynamic reference lines to visualizations, and provide focus for important trends or insights. To learn more, see Analytics pane in Power BI Desktop.

5. The Fields pane

The Fields pane displays the tables, folders, and fields in your data that are available for you to use to create visualizations.

• Drag a field onto the page to start a new visualization. You can also drag a field onto an existing visualization to add the field to that visualization.
  
  
• When you add a checkmark next to a field, Compose adds that field to the active (or new) visualization. It also decides which bucket to place that field into. For example, should the field be used a legend, axis, or value? Compose makes a best-guess and you can move it from that bucket to another if necessary.
  
  
• Either way, each selected field is added to the Visualizations pane in the report editor.