How to Add Navigation in Power BI

A Power BI report without clear navigation is like a website with no menu. Your audience can see the page they're on, but they have no easy way to get anywhere else. This article will show you how to add clean, intuitive navigation to your reports, turning them from static pages into interactive, user-friendly applications.

Why Is Navigation in Power BI So Important?

Before jumping into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." You put a lot of effort into gathering and visualizing your data, good navigation ensures that effort pays off by making your report feel professional and easy to use.

A well-structured navigation system accomplishes a few key things:

• Improves User Experience (UX): It guides users through the report, mimicking the intuitive flow of a website or app. Instead of aimlessly clicking through page tabs at the bottom, they have a clear path to follow.

• Tells a Story: Navigation helps you control the narrative. You can lead stakeholders from a high-level overview to more detailed pages in a logical sequence, ensuring they see the story you want to tell.

• Reduces Clutter: By creating dedicated pages for specific details and linking to them from a central "menu" page, you can keep your main dashboards clean, focused, and free of information overload.

Now, let's build some navigation. We’ll cover three effective methods: Bookmarks with Buttons, the Page Navigator, and Drill Through actions.

Method 1: The Classic Combo - Bookmarks and Buttons

The most flexible and creative way to build navigation is by combining bookmarks and buttons. Think of a bookmark as a "saved view" of your report page, and a button as the clickable element that takes you to that view.

Step 1: Create Your Views with Bookmarks

A bookmark captures the state of a report page. This includes filters, slicers, visible visuals, and more. A common strategy is to create one "main menu" page and then an individual bookmark for each page you want to navigate to.

Here’s how to set one up:

1. First, make sure the Bookmarks pane is visible. Go to the View tab in the Power BI ribbon and check the box for Bookmarks. A new pane will appear on the right side of your screen.

2. Go to the page you want to create a bookmark for. For example, navigate to your "Sales Details" page.

3. Adjust any slicers or filters to the default state you want the user to see when they land on this page.

4. In the Bookmarks pane, click Add. A new bookmark will appear with a generic name like "Bookmark 1."

5. Double-click the name and give it a clear, descriptive new name, like "Navigate to Sales" or simply "Sales Details."

6. Repeat this process for every page you want to include in your navigation system, creating a clear bookmark for each destination.

Pro Tip: By default, a bookmark captures data (filters and slicers), display (which visuals are visible), and the current page. You can click the ellipsis (...) next to a bookmark name to customize what it captures. For most navigation, the default settings are perfect.

Step 2: Add Clickable Buttons and Link them to Bookmarks

Now that you have your saved views (bookmarks), you need to give your users something to click. This is where buttons come in.

Follow these steps to create your navigation menu, typically on a central "Home" or "Overview" page:

1. Go to the Insert tab in the ribbon.

2. Click on Buttons. You’ll see a dropdown with several options. You can use a pre-made arrow or just select Blank for total customization.

3. Position the blank button on your report canvas where you want your navigation menu to be.

4. With the button selected, the Format pane will open on the right. Here you can style your button.

5. Under the Style section, turn Text on and type in a label for your button, such as "Sales Details." You can also adjust the font, color, and padding.

6. Now to link it, find the Action section in the Format pane and toggle it to On.

7. Set the Type to Bookmark.

8. In the Bookmark dropdown that appears, select the corresponding bookmark you created in the previous step (e.g., "Sales Details").

That's it! Now, when you (or your users) hold Ctrl and click the button in Power BI Desktop, you'll be taken directly to the sales page. In a published report online, users only need to click it once. Repeat this process to build out your full navigation bar, creating a button for each key page in your report.

Method 2: The Fast & Easy Way - The Page Navigator

If you don't need the granular control offered by bookmarks and just want a quick, clean way to navigate between pages, Power BI has a built-in feature for you: the Page Navigator.

This feature automatically generates a set of buttons corresponding to the pages in your report. It's incredibly efficient.

How to Add a Page Navigator

1. Select the Insert tab from the ribbon.

2. Click on Buttons, hover over Navigator, and then select Page navigator.

3. And…you’re done. Power BI will instantly create a navigation bar on your page with a button for every visible report page. It even highlights the button for the page you’re currently on.

Customizing the Page Navigator

Once you've added the Page Navigator, you can customize it in the Format pane. You can change the shape of the buttons, their colors, and even the layout orientation from horizontal to vertical.

The best customization tip is controlling which pages appear. The Page Navigator automatically excludes hidden pages. If you have "detail" pages that you only want users to access via another method (like drill through), you can right-click the page tab at the bottom and select Hide page. The Page Navigator will automatically update to remove it from the navigation bar.

Method 3: Contextual Navigation - Drill Through

Sometimes you don't want to just go to another page, you want to go to another page with a specific filter already applied from your selection. For this, Power BI has a powerful feature called Drill Through. It lets users right-click a data point on a chart and jump to a detailed page that is pre-filtered for that data point.

Imagine you have a chart showing sales by product category. With Drill Through, a user can right-click the "Electronics" bar and jump to a "Product Details" page that shows only electronics sales.

Step 1: Set Up the Drill Through Destination Page

1. First, create your detailed destination page (e.g., a page with a table of individual product sales).

2. Make sure nothing is selected on the canvas. Now, look at the Visualizations pane on the right. At the very bottom, you’ll see a section called Drill through.

3. Find the data field you want to filter this page by in your data fields list. In our example, this would be "Product Category."

4. Drag the "Product Category" field and drop it into the Add drill-through fields here well.

Once you do this, Power BI automatically does two things: it enables this page as a Drill Through target, and it adds a "Back" button to the canvas so users can easily return to the page they came from.

Step 2: Using the Drill Through Action

Now, go back to your main overview page where your "Sales by Product Category" chart is.

1. Right-click on any of the data points in that chart (e.g., the bar for "Clothing").

2. In the context menu that appears, you’ll see an option for Drill through.

3. Hover over it, and you will see the name of the destination page you just set up. Click it.

You'll be instantly transported to the detail page, which is now filtered to show only data corresponding to "Clothing." This method is fantastic for creating reports that allow for deep, intuitive exploration of the data.

Final Thoughts

Adding thoughtful navigation is what separates a simple data dump from a true business intelligence application. By using bookmarks, buttons, navigators, and Drill Through actions, you empower your users to explore data on their own terms, leading them from broad insights to the specific details that matter most.

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