How to Add Buttons to Power BI Report

Adding buttons to your Power BI report can transform it from a static page of charts into an interactive, app-like experience for your users. This quick guide will walk you through exactly how to create, format, and configure buttons to enable navigation, activate bookmarks, and much more.

Why Use Buttons in Your Power BI Reports?

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Buttons are often the missing piece that ties a great report together. They act as intuitive signposts that guide your audience, making complex data much easier to digest and navigate.

Here’s what buttons bring to the table:

• Improved User Experience (UX): Instead of forcing users to rely on the small page tabs at the bottom, you can create large, clear buttons for navigation. This makes your report feel more like a polished application or website.
• Guided Storytelling: You can create a specific path for users to follow. For instance, a "Next Step" or "View Campaign Details" button can lead them logically through your analysis, ensuring they don't miss key insights.
• Simplified Actions: Complex actions, like applying multiple filters or switching visual context, can be condensed into a single button click using bookmarks. This saves your users from having to manually adjust slicers on their own.
• Enhanced Functionality: Buttons can do more than just navigate pages. They can trigger drill-through actions, link to external websites, or reveal hidden information, adding layers of interactivity that make your report more powerful.

Understanding the Different Types of Buttons in Power BI

Power BI offers a gallery of pre-built buttons to get you started, but the real power lies in the customizable options. You can find them under the Insert tab on the top ribbon.

The main categories include:

• Blank: This is the most versatile option. You can completely customize its shape, text, icon, and actions. Most of the time, this will be your go-to choice.
• Pre-styled Arrows and Icons: These include Left/Right arrows for navigating a series of pages, a "Back" button, an "Information" icon, and more. These are great for standard actions where the icon already implies the function.
• Other Actions: Buttons like "Bookmark" and "Q&A" are pre-configured to tie directly into those specific Power BI features.

Remember, you're not limited to these options. Any visual element, like a shape or an imported image (such as your company logo), can have an "Action" applied to it, effectively turning it into a custom button.

Step-by-Step Guide: Adding and Formatting Your First Button

Let's walk through creating a simple "View Details" button that navigates to another page. This process covers the fundamental steps you'll use for any button you create.

Step 1: Inserting the Button on Your Report

First, navigate to the page where you want to add your button. On the main ribbon at the top of the screen, click the Insert tab. From there, click the Buttons dropdown menu and select Blank. A simple grey rectangle will appear on your report canvas. You can click and drag it to position it wherever you like.

Step 2: Formatting the Button's Appearance

With a plain grey box on your screen, the next step is to make it look like a button. Select the new button you just added. The Format pane will appear on the right side of the screen. This is where you'll customize everything about its look and feel.

Here are the most important formatting options to focus on:

• Style: This is where the magic happens. Here you can add text, change the fill color, adjust the border, and add a shadow. Pay close attention to the State dropdown menu (Default, On hover, On press, Disabled). You can set different formatting for each state, giving the user clear visual feedback. For example, you can make the button slightly darker when they hover over it.
• Button Text: Open the "Style" section and simply type your desired text, like "View Sales Details," into the Text field. You can adjust the font, color, size, and alignment here.
• Fill: Change the background color of your button. A good practice is to set the fill color for the "Default" state and a slightly lighter or darker version for the "On hover" state.
• Icon: You can add a pre-built icon (like a right arrow) or even use your own custom image by selecting "Custom".
• Shape: If you don't want a standard rectangle, you can change the button's shape to a rounded rectangle, an arrow, an oval, and more.

Step 3: Configuring the Button's Action

Once your button looks the way you want it to, it's time to make it do something. In the same Format pane, find the Action toggle and switch it ON. This unlocks a set of options where you define what happens when a user clicks the button.

Under the Type dropdown, you will find several different actions to choose from. Let's explore the most common and useful ones.

Exploring Button Actions: Making Your Report Interactive

The "Action" setting determines your button's purpose. Here are the key types you'll use most often to enhance your report.

Page Navigation

This is the most straightforward action. It turns your button into a hyperlink that takes the user to another page within the same report.

• What it does: Jumps to a specific report page.
• How to set it up: Select Page navigation from the Type dropdown. Then, in the Destination field, select the name of the page you want to link to.
• Common Use Case: Creating a "Home" button on every page that links back to a main summary dashboard, or a "Next Page" button to guide users through a multi-page analysis in a specific order.

Bookmark

Bookmarks are one of Power BI's most powerful interactive features. A bookmark captures a specific state of a report page—including filters, slicers, sort orders, and the visibility of visuals. You can then use a button to activate that captured state.

• What it does: Applies a pre-saved view of the report page.
• First, you need to create a bookmark: Set up your report page exactly as you want it to appear when the button is clicked (e.g., hide certain charts, apply a filter). Go to the View tab in the ribbon and click Bookmarks to open the pane. Click "Add" and give your new bookmark a descriptive name (e.g., "Show Sales Trend").
• How to set it up: Select your button, turn on the Action, and set its Type to Bookmark. Under the Bookmark dropdown, choose the one you just created.
• Common Use Case: Creating buttons that toggle between a chart view and a table view of the same data, or buttons that show/hide an advanced filter pane. This allows you to declutter your report and show information only when the user asks for it.

Drill Through

A drill-through action lets a user navigate from a high-level summary visual to a detailed page, while carrying over the context of what they clicked.

• What it does: Navigates to a detailed page, automatically filtering it based on the user's data point selection on the current page.
• First, set up a drill-through "target" page: Create a new page with your detailed charts and tables. On that new page, drag the field you want to filter by (e.g., Product Category) into the Drill through field well at the bottom of the Visualizations pane. Power BI automatically adds a "Back" button to this page for you.
• How to set it up: Go back to your summary page. Select your button and set its Action Type to Drill through. Choose the drill-through target page in the Destination dropdown.
• How it works: The button will be disabled by default. It only becomes active when a user selects a specific data point in visuals on the current page. For example, if a user clicks on the "Electronics" bar in a Sales by Category chart, the "View Details" button will light up. Clicking it then takes them to the drill-through page, already filtered to show only data for "Electronics".

Web URL

This action is simple but incredibly useful. It opens a specific web page in the user’s default browser, letting you link to external resources directly from your report.

• What it does: Opens an external web link.
• How to set it up: Set the Action Type to Web URL. Paste the full URL into the Web URL field that appears.
• Common Use Case: Creating a "Help" or "Data Source Info" button that links to an internal wiki, SharePoint document, or company website for more context. You could also link directly to a specific Salesforce record or a Google Analytics report page.

Advanced Tips and Best Practices

Once you've mastered the basics, here are a few extra tips to make your buttons even more effective:

• Use Dynamic Tooltips: In the Action card, you can add text to the Tooltip field. This text will appear when a user hovers over the button, providing helpful context like "Click to view a year-over-year comparison."
• Leverage Button States: Don't skip formatting for "On hover" and "On press" states. This small detail provides crucial visual feedback that confirms to the user they are interacting with a clickable element.
• Combine Buttons and Bookmarks: To create a slick navigation menu or toggle switch, create multiple bookmarks and assign each one to a different button. You can layer the buttons on top of each other and use bookmarks to show/hide them, giving the appearance of one button changing state.
• Use Images as Buttons: For a fully branded report, import your own icons or logos via the Insert > Image menu. Once the image is on your canvas, you can select it and apply an Action in the format pane, just like a standard button.

Final Thoughts

By thoughtfully adding buttons, you move beyond building simple data visualizations and start creating dynamic, user-friendly analytical tools. Mastering actions like Page Navigation, Bookmarks, and Drill Through unlocks a new level of professionalism and guides your audience to the most important insights without confusion.

While Power BI offers deep customization, the learning curve can be steep, and setting up all these visual elements and actions takes time. At Graphed, we remove all that manual work. You can create fully interactive, real-time dashboards simply by connecting your data sources and describing what you need in plain English. No need to learn about formatting panes or bookmark tricks—just ask for the analysis you want, and our AI data analyst builds it for you in seconds.