Graphed LogoGraphed
Login

How to Add Page Level Filter in Power BI

Cody Schneider•

Power BI reports can quickly become dense with information, packed with charts and tables covering every angle of your business. To make sense of it all, you need to filter your data effectively. This guide will walk you through exactly how to add and use page-level filters in Power BI to create focused, easy-to-understand report pages.

Understanding the Different Filter Levels in Power BI

Before focusing on page-level filters, it helps to understand the hierarchy of all filters available in Power BI. Think of them as containers of different sizes, some affect just one little thing, while others affect everything. These scopes determine which visuals a filter will apply to.

There are four main types of filters:

  • Visual-level filters: These apply to a single, specific visual on your report page. For example, you could have a bar chart showing sales by product category and apply a visual-level filter to show only your top 5 categories. This filter would not affect any other charts or tables on the same page.

  • Page-level filters: These apply to all visuals on a single report page. This is our focus today. If you apply a page-level filter — for instance, to show data only for "Q1 2024" — every single bar chart, pie chart, table, and map on that page will automatically be filtered for that time period.

  • Report-level filters: As the name suggests, these apply to all pages and all visuals in the entire report. This is useful for setting a global context, like filtering the entire report to show data only for the "United States" region or a specific business division.

  • Drillthrough filters: These are a bit different. They are used to pass the context from one report page to another. For example, a user could right-click on "Canada" in a summary chart and "drill through" to a detailed page that is automatically filtered just for Canada.

Understanding this hierarchy is the first step to building clean, intuitive reports. By choosing the right filter level for the job, you give both yourself and your audience a clearer path to the insights you want to share.

When Should You Use a Page-Level Filter?

Page-level filters are perfect for when you want to dedicate an entire report page to a specific slice of your data. Instead of making users apply the same filters over and over, you can create pre-filtered views for them. This not only saves time but also reduces the chance of errors or misinterpretation.

Here are some of the most common and effective scenarios for using page-level filters:

  • Creating Time-Based Views: Design separate pages for different time frames. You could have one page filtered to show "This Quarter's Performance," another for "Last Month's Marketing Results," and a third for "Year-to-Date Sales."

  • Regional or Departmental Deep-Dives: If you have an international business, you can create a separate page for each major region (e.g., North America, Europe, Asia). Similarly, you could have pages dedicated to the performance of specific sales teams or business departments.

  • Focusing on a Product Category: Imagine you sell clothing, electronics, and home goods. You could build a dedicated report page for your "Electronics" category, with all visuals filtered to show only performance data for those products.

  • Customer or Audience Segmentation: Analyze different customer segments by creating pages filtered for "New Customers," "VIP Clients," or users from a specific marketing campaign. This allows you to tailor the visuals on each page to the questions relevant to that segment.

In short, if you find yourself wanting to answer the question, "What does all of this data look like for _______?" then a page-level filter is likely the right tool for the job.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Add and Configure a Page-Level Filter

Now for the practical part. Let's walk through how to add a filter to a report page. The process is straightforward once you know where to look.

1. Select Your Page and Open the Filters Pane

First, open your report in Power BI Desktop. In the main canvas, click on the tab at the bottom of the screen for the page you want to filter.

Next, locate the Filters pane. By default, it's usually visible on the right side of the screen, next to the Visualizations and Fields panes. If you don't see it, go to the View tab in the top ribbon and make sure the "Filters" checkbox is ticked.

Inside the Filters pane, you’ll see sections for "Filters on this visual," "Filters on this page," and "Filters on all pages."

2. Drag a Field to the "Filters on this page" Well

From your Fields pane (the list of all your data tables and columns), find the field you want to filter by. Click and drag this field into the box designated "Filters on this page."

For example, if you want to create a page dedicated to the United Kingdom, you would drag the "Country" field into this section.

3. Configure Your Filter Type and Settings

Once you drop the field into the well, Power BI will present you with filtering options. The type of options you see will depend on whether the field is text, a number, or a date.

Basic Filtering (for Text/Categorical Data)

This is the default for text fields. It presents a list of all available values with checkboxes next to them. You can simply check the boxes for the values you want to include.

Example: Drag in a "Region" field and check the boxes for "North America" and "South America." All visuals on the page will now only show data from those two regions.

Advanced Filtering (for More Complex Rules)

If you need more specific rules, you can change the "Filter type" to Advanced filtering. This allows you to set conditions like:

  • Contains / does not contain

  • Starts with / does not start with

  • Is blank / is not blank

You can also combine rules using "And" or "Or" logic. For instance, filtering a "Product Name" field to show products that contain "Pro" OR contain "Max."

Top N Filtering (to Find Top Performers)

This type lets you display the top or bottom performers. For example, to find your top 10 best-selling products:

  1. Drag the "Product Name" field into the "Filters on this page" well.

  2. Change the Filter type to Top N.

  3. Set it to show Top and enter 10 in the box.

  4. Drag a metric field, like "Total Sales," into the By value box.

  5. Click Apply filter.

Now, everything on the page will be filtered to only show data related to your 10 best-selling products.

Relative Date and Time Filtering (for Dynamic Time Windows)

This is one of the most powerful and commonly used filter types for dates. Instead of hard-coding a date range like "Jan 1, 2024 - Mar 31, 2024," you can set a dynamic window relative to today's date.

Change the filter type to Relative date. You'll get options to show items in the...

  • last/next/this: day(s), week(s), month(s), year(s), etc.

Example: To create a page showing everything that happened last month, you'd set the filter to show items in the last 1 month. Every time you open the report, it will automatically update to reflect the previous month's data without any manual changes.

Tips and Best Practices for Page-Level Filters

Applying the filter is just the start. To build truly effective and user-friendly reports, keep these best practices in mind.

Lock or Hide Your Filters

After setting a page-level filter, you have two options to control how a report viewer interacts with it. Next to the filter name in the Filters pane, you’ll see a padlock and an eye icon.

  • Lock filter (padlock icon): This prevents the end-user from changing the filter. They can see that the page is filtered for "Q1 2024," for example, but they can't remove it or change it. This is great for an "official" report page where a specific context must be maintained.

  • Hide filter (eye icon): This hides the filter from a report viewer completely. They won't even see it in the Filters pane. This is useful for cleaning up the interface or for applying foundational filters that the user doesn’t need to worry about (for example, hiding a filter that removes test data or internal transactions from the view).

Make Filters Obvious to Your Audience

If you apply a significant page-level filter like a specific date range or region, don’t assume users will find it in the filter pane. It's a best practice to state the page's context directly on the report canvas. You can do this by:

  • Changing the Page Title: Rename the page tab from "Page 1" to "Q1 2024 Performance."

  • Adding a Title in the Header: Add a large, clear text box at the top of your report that says "European Sales Deep-Dive."

  • Using a Card Visual: Create a card that displays the filtered category or date range so it's always visible as part of the data.

Use Page Filters to Improve Report Performance

An often-overlooked benefit of page-level filters is speed. When a page has a filter applied, Power BI only has to query, process, and render the data that passes the filter. For a large dataset, a page filtered to show only "the last 30 days" will load much faster than a page that tries to load five years' worth of data across all its visuals.

Combine with Slicers for Interactive Exploration

Remember that page-level filters set the baseline context for the page, established by you, the creator. Slicers are user-facing controls that allow your audience to explore the data within that context.

For example, you could use a page-level filter to set the page to "2024." Then, you can add a slicer to the page that lets a user choose specific months or product categories within 2024. The page-level filter guarantees they can't accidentally look at data from another year, while the slicer gives them flexibility within that guarded boundary.

Final Thoughts

Mastering page-level filters is a fundamental step toward creating Power BI reports that are clearer, faster, and more focused. By dedicating pages to specific segments, timeframes, or categories, you guide users directly to the insights they need without overwhelming them with unnecessary data, making your reports more impactful.

But learning the ins and outs of tools like Power BI - from filter scopes to data models to its interface - represents a significant time investment just to get answers from your data. At Graphed, we’ve created a way for marketing and sales teams to bypass that steep learning curve entirely. Instead of dragging and dropping fields, our AI data analyst lets you simply describe the report you want in plain English. Just connect sources like Google Analytics, Salesforce, and Shopify, and then ask, "Show me my top-performing ad campaigns in the US for last quarter," and instantly get a live, shareable dashboard without touching a single filter pane.