Custom Bounding Box in Power Bi Azure Map to exclude unwanted areas

Question

Custom Bounding Box in Power Bi Azure Map to exclude unwanted areas

AnjaBrummer-2183 0

"Current - with Marion Island as part of City of Cape Town.png" – shows the current undesired view where Marion Island is included, which unnecessarily alters the zoom level.

"Correct view with bounding box.png" – shows the intended view of the Western Cape municipalities without Marion Island, keeping the focus on the relevant mainland areas.

Marion Island does not appear in my dataset. However, it is still drawn on the map because it is part of the City of Cape Town administrative boundary in the TomTom base data. Since the Azure Maps visual currently does not respond to bounding box settings, there is no way to stop Marion Island from affecting the map’s auto-zoom.

A side note: I would have preferred to use coordinates as a layer, but I am restricted because I cannot add a district (polygon) layer to a coordinate layer in the Azure Maps visual. As a result, I am forced to work with addresses instead. On a positive note, once I drill down with Auto Zoom enabled, I do get the correct view — but with Auto Zoom enabled, my main/default view is distorted.

(Reference layers will not work as I need this to filter the rest of the data - and have drill down abilities)

Proposed enhancement:

Enable the Azure Maps visual to respect a defined bounding box (min/max latitude & longitude) so that the visible area can be constrained to a specific region. (This feature is mentioned with Azure but I don't see it in the Power Bi Visual Settings?)

Example bounding box for Western Cape province of South Africa:

Southwest corner (min latitude, min longitude): (-35.0, 16.0)

Northeast corner (max latitude, max longitude): (-22.0, 33.0)

Min Latitude: -35.0 // near Cape Agulhas

Max Latitude: -32.0 // just above Saldanha Bay

Min Longitude: 17.5 // just west of the coast

Max Longitude: 22.0 // just east of George

Why this is important:

Keeps Auto Zoom usable
Prevents outlier administrative areas from distorting the map extent.
Maintains a clean, relevant map view focused on the region of interest.

Would it be possible for the Azure Maps visual to support this functionality in Power BI, or do you have any other recommendations for achieving the same outcome in this scenario? Things I have tried that were unsuccessful:

Adding Marion Island into my Dataset in order to deselect it in the Filters
Limiting the Coordinates to a min and Max (Above or below a certain latitude/longitude in the filter Pane)

Thank you for your time if you read this far!

Manas Mohanty 11,690 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-10-03T19:03:02.2866667+00:00
Hello AnjaBrummer-2183

As you mentioned you cannot use Geojson data (with concerned regions removed) as reference layer.

Won't be easy to

Turn Auto zoom = Off.

Set a Centre latitude and longitude and tune Zoom until the mainland municipalities fill the frame nicely. Save that as the default and use it as power Bi

You can use this zoom actually in your power Bi.

It would be difficult to come with working solution with reference layer and Autozoom because of some known limitation.

Reference -

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Service/Azure-Maps-issue-maps-not-auto-zooming-in-service/m-p/4320297

https://free.blessedness.top/en-us/azure/azure-maps/power-bi-visual-add-reference-layer?tabs=upload

Thank you

Thank you.

2 answers

Your answer

Manas Mohanty 11,690 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-10-03T19:03:02.2866667+00:00

Hello AnjaBrummer-2183

As you mentioned you cannot use Geojson data (with concerned regions removed) as reference layer.

Won't be easy to

Turn Auto zoom = Off.

Set a Centre latitude and longitude and tune Zoom until the mainland municipalities fill the frame nicely. Save that as the default and use it as power Bi

You can use this zoom actually in your power Bi.

It would be difficult to come with working solution with reference layer and Autozoom because of some known limitation.

Reference -

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Service/Azure-Maps-issue-maps-not-auto-zooming-in-service/m-p/4320297

https://free.blessedness.top/en-us/azure/azure-maps/power-bi-visual-add-reference-layer?tabs=upload

Thank you

Thank you.

Answer 1

Alex Burlachenko 18,310 Volunteer Moderator

Hi AnjaBrummer-2183,

marion island is technically part of the boundary, so the map auto zooms to include it, completely wrecking your view of the mainland. you've done a great job diagnosing the issue.

you're absolutely right, the power bi azure maps visual currently lacks a built in bounding box property in its settings pane, which is the most straightforward fix for this. that feature exists in the full azure maps sdk but hasn't been ported to the power bi visual yet.

since you can't use a bounding box, here's a workaround you can try. instead of filtering by address, try filtering by latitude and longitude directly in your power bi data.

add calculated columns to your dataset that extract the latitude and longitude for each of your locations. then, in the power bi filters pane for the page or visual, you can set a filter on these columns to only show points where the latitude is greater than -35.0 and less than -32.0, and the longitude is between 17.5 and 22.0.

this acts as a manual bounding box filter. the map will only plot the points within your specified coordinates, and the auto zoom should then focus on that filtered set of points, effectively excluding marion island from the calculation.

it's not as elegant as a native bounding box, but it should achieve the result you're looking for and keep your drill through functionality intact.

add lat/lon columns to your data and use the power bi numeric range filters on those columns to create a manual bounding box that excludes the outlier.

regards,

Alex

and "yes" if you would follow me at Q&A - personaly thx.
P.S. If my answer help to you, please Accept my answer

https://ctrlaltdel.blog/

AnjaBrummer-2183 0 Reputation points

2025-10-03T08:31:16.2766667+00:00

Hello @Alex Burlachenko - Thanks for your quick response!

I am unfortunately forced to use the text descriptions as datapoints because the visual limits me. I can't have coordinates in one layer and the districts shapes in another - another shortfall in my opinion to be honest... (With Reference layers yes but this isn't clickable to drill down into the next layer)

As I mentioned I also tried the manual bounding box in the filter pane and the map doesn't respond to that either. Which is why I am here... any other ideas?
Alex Burlachenko 18,310 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2025-10-03T08:56:46.23+00:00
You're absolutely right, and that is a massive limitation. It's incredibly frustrating when the tool's architecture blocks the most logical solution. The disconnect between coordinate layers and shape layers that kills interactivity is a known pain point.

Given those hard constraints, we have to get creative. Since the map's auto-zoom is the enemy here, let's try to trick it. the core idea is to give the map a "dummy" point to focus on first, before it ever sees the data that includes the problematic boundary.

Create a Decoy Point, add a single, invisible data point to your dataset at the precise center of your desired view (e.g., the center of the Western Cape mainland). You can mark this point with a special category, like "ViewAnchor".

Control the Zoom with a Slicer:

Create a slicer in Power BI based on this new category.

By default, have only the "ViewAnchor" point selected.

The map will now auto-zoom perfectly to this single point, giving you your clean, focused default view.

When a user wants to drill down, they simply select the specific municipality or district from your main data in a different slicer. This will add those shapes to the map, but the initial zoom level might now be "sticky" enough to keep Marion Island out of the picture.

Another, more advanced idea is to pre-process your data. If you have access to the source of the district shapes (like a GeoJSON file), you could use a tool like QGIS or even a Python script to crop the polygon of the City of Cape Town, literally cutting Marion Island out of the boundary before you even import it into Power BI. This is a nuclear option, but it would solve the problem at the root.

It's not ideal, but the "decoy point" method is often the only way to wrestle back control from the auto-zoom when you're boxed in by the visual's limitations.

Good luck, my friend. This is a true battle against the defaults.

rgds,

Alex

p.s. If my answer help to you, please Accept my answer

Answer 2

IoTGirl 3,811 Microsoft Employee Moderator

Please ask your questions regarding Maps in Power BI in their forum. The folks that know the customization are available there. Please review https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?advanced=false&allow_punctuation=false&filter=location&location=category:powerbi&q=Maps and see if your question has already been asked and answered.

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Custom Bounding Box in Power Bi Azure Map to exclude unwanted areas

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