How to Add Multiple Lines in a Power BI Line Chart (4 Ways)

Last month, a Contoso finance lead wanted revenue and profit on the same trend chart, and then a second view that compared 2026 with 2025 month by month. Both are a Power BI line chart with multiple lines, but they’re built in different ways, and mixing them up gives you a grayed-out Legend well.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you the four ways to add more than one line, when to use each, and how to format each line on its own. My sample is a Contoso Sales table with Order Date, Region, Revenue and Profit for 2025 and 2026.

Quick answer: Add two or more measures to the Y-axis well to get one line per measure, or keep one measure and put a category field (such as Year or Region) in the Legend well to get one line per value. You can’t do both at once: a chart with several measures in Y-axis doesn’t accept a Legend field.

Four ways to get multiple lines

Microsoft calls the first two methods static and dynamic series. Pick the one that matches your question:

Method	Wells to use	Best for
Several measures	2+ fields in Y-axis	Revenue vs Profit, Actual vs Target
Legend field	1 measure in Y-axis + a field in Legend	One line per year, region or product
Secondary y-axis	1 measure in Y-axis + 1 in Secondary y-axis	Measures with very different scales
Small multiples	A field in Small multiples	Too many lines to read on one chart

If you’re new to this visual, start with the Power BI line chart basics and come back here for the multi-line options.

Method 1: Add several measures to the Y-axis

1. Select the Line chart icon in the Visualizations pane.
2. Check Order Date in the Data pane. It goes to the X-axis as a Date Hierarchy. I removed Quarter and Day with the X next to each level, which leaves Year and Month.
3. Check Revenue, then Profit. Both go to the Y-axis well, and each one becomes a line.

The legend lists Sum of Revenue and Sum of Profit. To show friendlier names, double-click a field in the well and rename it for this visual only. If your X-axis shows a date hierarchy you don’t want, the post on the Power BI line chart date hierarchy explains how to switch it to the plain date.

Method 2: Use a secondary y-axis for different scales

In the chart above, profit runs at $20K to $40K a month while revenue hits $250K, so the profit line looks flat. Move it to its own axis:

• Remove Sum of Profit from the Y-axis well.
• Drag Profit from the Data pane into the Secondary y-axis well.

Now profit has its own scale on the right, and you can see it rise and fall with revenue. Name both axes in Format visual > Y-axis and Secondary y-axis > Title, or readers may compare the wrong numbers. When one series should be columns, a Power BI combo chart is often clearer.

Method 3: One line per category with the Legend

For a year-over-year chart, you want one line per year, not one per measure:

1. Keep a single measure, Revenue, in the Y-axis well.
2. Put only the Month level of Order Date in the X-axis.
3. Drag the Year level of the Date Hierarchy into the Legend well.

Power BI draws one line for 2025 and one for 2026. Add a third year to the data, and a third line appears on its own. That’s why it’s called a dynamic series. The same setup works with Region or Category in the Legend.

Keep it to about five lines. Past that, use a slicer so readers pick what they compare; see enable multiple selections in a Power BI slicer for the Ctrl+click and multi-select settings.

Method 4: Small multiples

Drag a field such as Region into the Small multiples well, and Power BI draws a grid of small line charts, one per region, each with the same lines. In Format visual > Y-axis > Range, keep Shared y-axis on to compare heights fairly.

If you want readers to choose the measure themselves, a field parameter (Modeling > New parameter > Fields) adds a slicer that swaps the lines, and you can sync slicers across report pages so the choice follows them.

Format each line separately

By default, every line has the same width and style. To change one line:

1. Select the chart and open Format visual > Visual.
2. Expand Lines. Under Apply settings to, pick the series in the Series drop-down, for example 2025.
3. Under Line, set Line style to Solid, Dashed, Dotted or Custom, and adjust the Width.
4. Change the Color under the same card, and turn on Markers if you want dots on each point.

I set last year to dashed, which makes the current year stand out. Turn on Series labels to put each name at the end of its line instead of in a legend. To color a line by value, for example red below a target, see conditional formatting in a Power BI line chart.

Troubleshooting multiple lines

• The Legend well is grayed out or rejects the field: you have two or more measures in the Y-axis. Keep one measure, or drop the Legend.
• Only one line shows: a slicer or filter limits the data, or the second measure is blank for those dates. Check the Filters pane.
• One line looks flat: the measures have very different scales. Use the Secondary y-axis.
• Missing points break the line: blank values create gaps. Return 0 in the measure if a gap should be a zero.
• Lines are spiky and hard to read: the X-axis is at day level. Drill up to Month or remove the Day level.

For gaps that should read as zero, the steps to show zero values in a Power BI line chart work for every line on the chart.

Want to keep building trend charts? These are good next reads:

• Power BI Column Chart: How to Create It, Every Type and Formatting
• Area Chart in Power BI
• How to Add Conditional Formatting in Power BI (2026 Guide)
• How to Edit Visual Interactions in Power BI (Filter, Highlight, None)

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