How to Remove Filter from Visual in Power BI

Accidentally narrowed down your Power BI visual a little too much or just need to reset your view to see the bigger picture? We've all been there. Adding filters is easy, but figuring out how to remove them - especially when they’re not behaving as expected - can sometimes be tricky. This tutorial will give you a clear, step-by-step guide to removing filters from your visuals in Power BI, including how to handle sneaky filters from slicers and other chart interactions.

First, Understand Where Filters Live in Power BI

In Power BI, a "filter" isn't a single thing, it can live at several different levels. Understanding this hierarchy is the key to figuring out why your visual is displaying certain data. Before we remove a filter, let’s identify where it might be coming from.

You can find all of these in the Filters pane, which is usually located on the right side of your Power BI Desktop canvas. If you don't see it, go to the View tab in the ribbon and make sure the "Filters" checkbox is ticked.

The Filters pane is divided into collapsible sections:

• Filters on this visual: These apply only to the single chart or table you have selected. This is our primary focus for this guide.
• Filters on this page: These apply to every visual on the current report page. A classic example is a date filter that you want to affect all charts on a "Monthly Sales" page.
• Filters on all pages: These are report-level filters that apply to every single visual across all pages in your entire Power BI report. This is often used for high-level filtering, like showing data for only a specific year or business division.

A visual can be affected by filters from all three levels at the same time. The reason it’s important to know this is that you might be trying to remove a filter at the "visual" level when it’s actually being applied at the "page" or "report" level.

How to Remove a Standard Filter from a Single Visual

Let's start with the most common scenario: you've dragged a data field into the "Filters on this visual" well for a specific chart, and now you want to either clear it or remove it completely.

Here’s the process:

1. Select the Visual You Want to Edit

This is an easy step to forget, but it's essential. Click once on the chart, graph, or table on your canvas that you want to modify. You'll know it's selected when you see a border with handles appear around it. When a visual is selected, the Filters pane will update to show you the filters specifically affecting it.

2. Locate the Filters Pane and Your Filter

Look at the Filters pane on the right. In the Filters on this visual section, you will see a list of "cards," one for each field that is currently being used to filter that visual. It might be something like "Region is Midwest" or "Sales is greater than 1000."

3. Choose How to Remove the Filter

You have two main options here, each with a different icon and purpose:

Option A: Clear the Filter Selections (The Eraser Icon) If you want to keep the filter field in place for future use but just want to reset its current settings, use the small eraser icon at the top-right corner of the filter card. This is useful if you’ve selected a few specific categories (e.g., "North" and "South") and want to revert to showing "All" categories without having to delete and re-add the "Region" field later.

• Hover over the filter card.
• Click the eraser icon labeled "Clear filter."

Option B: Remove the Filter Field Entirely (The 'X' Icon) If you want to completely remove the filter field from the visual, so it's no longer being used to filter that visual at all, you'll use the 'X' icon.

• Hover over the filter card.
• Click the 'X' icon labeled "Remove filter."

The entire filter card will disappear from the Filters pane for that visual, and your chart will update instantly to reflect the change.

When the Filter Isn't in the Pane: Other Common Filtering Types

Sometimes you’ll see a visual is filtered, but you check the "Filters on this visual" section and it’s empty. This is a very common source of confusion. Usually, the filter is coming from an interactive element on the report page, not the Filters pane.

Scenario 1: Resetting a Slicer

A slicer is a user-friendly filter that lives directly on the report canvas. It might look like a dropdown menu, a list of checkboxes, or a date slider. Slicers are designed for report viewers to interact with, but they create filters that you won’t see in the "Filters on this visual" well.

How to remove a slicer's filter:

1. Find the slicer on your report page that is affecting your visual. It will likely have a selection active (e.g., a specific date range or a checked category).
2. Look for the eraser icon in the header of the slicer itself. Clicking this will clear the selections in that slicer, and any visuals it's connected to will revert to showing all data.

Scenario 2: Removing Cross-Filtering from Other Visuals

By default, all visuals on a Power BI page are interactive. If you click a bar on one chart (e.g., the bar for "2023"), it will automatically filter or highlight all other charts on the page to show data just for "2023." This is called cross-filtering or cross-highlighting.

This is a powerful feature, but it often makes beginners think they've broken something when a chart suddenly looks empty or incomplete.

How to remove a cross-filter:

• The fix is simple: just click on the same element you originally selected in the first visual. For example, if you clicked on the "2023" bar, click it again to deselect it.
• Alternatively, you can click on any blank white space on the canvas away from all visuals. This will also clear any active cross-filtering and reset all charts to their default state.

Scenario 3: The Filter is at a Higher Level

If you've checked for visual filters, slicers, and cross-filtering, and your visual is still unexpectedly filtered, the cause is almost certainly a page-level or report-level filter.

How to check:

• Without any specific visual selected (click on a blank part of the page), look at the Filters pane.
• Expand the sections for "Filters on this page" and "Filters on all pages."
• Look for any filter cards here that might be affecting your view. You can clear or remove them using the same eraser or 'X' icons as you did for the visual-level filter.

Remember, removing a filter at these levels will affect all visuals on the page or in the report, respectively, so do so with care!

Practical Tips for Clearer Reporting

• Provide a "Reset Filters" Button: For your report viewers, it can be incredibly helpful to add an explicit "Clear all slicers" button. You can do this by inserting a blank Button visual and setting its Action type to "Clear all slicers." This makes the report much more user-friendly.
• Understand Filter Direction: You can control how visuals interact with each other. Select a visual, go to the Format tab, and click "Edit interactions." This lets you define whether clicking one chart should filter, highlight, or do nothing to other charts on the page.
• Hide Unnecessary Filters: If you've set up a filter that is essential for the report's context and you don't want end-users to change it, you can hide it by clicking the eyeball icon on the filter card in the Filters pane.

Final Thoughts

Removing filters in Power BI is all about knowing where to look. By systematically checking the Filters pane at the visual, page, and report levels - as well as checking for interactive elements like slicers and cross-filtering - you can take full control of your data visualizations and ensure you're always telling the right story.

While mastering traditional BI tools is a powerful feeling, we know that digging through panes and troubleshooting filter interactions is often the kind of manual work that slows analysis down. That’s why we built Graphed to do the hard work for you. Instead of hunting for the right icon, you can simply ask a question in plain English, like "Show me my sales KPIs, but remove the filter for the West region," and get an updated live dashboard in seconds. It allows you to have a continuous conversation with your data, getting immediate answers without ever getting stuck in the weeds of menus and panes.