Breakdown Bar charts break when “Show data labels” is enabled and all data is filtered out

Looker Q&A Looker Studio
1

When using Looker bar charts with a breakdown dimension, enabling Show data labels causes the chart to break if all data is filtered out.

They only work when there is data xor show data labels is off.

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Create a bar chart with a breakdown dimension.

  2. Enable Show data labels.

  3. Apply filters that exclude all data.

2

Hey,

Hope you’re keeping well.

This is a known rendering issue in Looker’s visualization layer when the data set is empty and data labels are forced on. The safest workaround is to either disable Show data labels when filters could result in no rows, or adjust the query to always return a placeholder row (for example, using a COALESCE on numeric measures). You can also wrap the visualization in a conditional block in a dashboard to hide the chart entirely if the result set is empty. I recommend filing this through Looker Support or the Looker Ideas Portal with your repro steps so the visualization team can track and patch it.

Thanks and regards,
Taz