Power BI Module 5: Filters and Slicers – Make Interactive Dashboards Easily

🧲 Module 5: Filters and Slicers – Make Your Reports Interactive

Filters and slicers are powerful tools that bring interactivity to Power BI dashboards. They let users control what data is shown across visuals without editing the report structure.

🔍 What Are Filters and Slicers?

• Filters allow report designers to restrict data at various levels (report/page/visual)
• Slicers are visual elements that allow users to dynamically filter data by clicking buttons or selecting values

💡 Tip: Use filters to design the experience and slicers to give users control.

📁 Types of Filters in Power BI

• Report-level filters – apply to all pages
• Page-level filters – apply only to one report page
• Visual-level filters – apply to one specific visual

How to add:

• Click a visual or report page
• In the Filters pane (right side), drag a field into the appropriate filter bucket
• Set filter logic (equals, contains, is blank, greater than, etc.)

Use Case: Filter all visuals on a sales report to only show “Current Year” data at the report level.

🎛️ Creating a Slicer

Slicers are a user-friendly way to let readers control what they see — for example, filter by Region, Date, or Product Category.

• Click on the Slicer visual from the Visualizations pane
• Drag a field like Region, Date, or Product Type into the slicer
• Resize or reposition it like any other visual

Slicer Types:

• List – Shows all values as clickable items
• Dropdown – Compact form with dropdown
• Between – Useful for date or numeric ranges
• Relative – e.g., “Last 7 Days”, “Next 3 Months”

📑 Select Multiple Values in a Slicer

• Use Ctrl + Click to select multiple options in a list slicer
• Or turn on the “Multi-select with Ctrl” option in the Format pane → Selection Controls
• You can also enable “Select All” to let users clear slicer easily

💡 Example: Let users select multiple product categories to filter all visuals (e.g., show only “Electronics” and “Clothing” revenue).

📊 Set a Chart to Respond to a Slicer

By default, slicers affect all visuals on the page that share a relationship with the sliced field.

• If a slicer is not filtering a chart, check the data model relationships
• Use Visual Interactions (Format tab → Edit Interactions) to control which visuals respond to which slicers

Use Case: Allow users to filter by Year using a slicer, but prevent it from affecting a static pie chart that always shows overall totals.

🧠 Advanced Slicer Techniques

• Hierarchical Slicers: Add multiple fields (e.g., Category → Subcategory)
• Sync Slicers: Use a slicer across multiple pages (View → Sync Slicers)
• Bookmarks: Use buttons + slicers to toggle between views
• DAX Slicers: Use calculated tables to build custom slicers (e.g., “Top 5 Products”)

📌 Summary: Filters vs. Slicers

🎯 Bottom Line: Use filters to structure data logic and slicers to empower users. Together, they make Power BI reports dynamic, flexible, and user-driven.