How to Sync Slicers with Bookmarks in Power BI

Building an interactive report in Power BI is a great way to empower your team, but what if you want to guide them through a specific story or create pre-set views? That's where syncing slicers with bookmarks comes in. This powerful technique lets you save specific filter and slicer configurations so users can toggle between customized views with a single click. This article will walk you through, step-by-step, how to set up and use bookmarks to control your slicers and create a slick, guided user experience.

Understanding the Core Components: Slicers and Bookmarks

Before diving into the process, let's quickly review the two essential Power BI features we'll be using. If you're already comfortable with them, feel free to skip to the next section.

What are Slicers?

Slicers are a simple form of on-canvas visual filter in Power BI. They allow any user viewing a report to easily filter data on a page without needing to open the Filters pane. For example, instead of digging through a "Year" filter, you can place a "Year" slicer directly on your report, making it obvious and easy for your team to segment the data to see performance for 2022, 2023, or 2024.

Slicers can be displayed as lists, dropdowns, or tiles, making them a flexible tool for improving the customizability of your dashboards.

What are Bookmarks?

Bookmarks capture the current state of a report page. Think of them as a "saved snapshot." A bookmark can capture several things, including:

• The current page being viewed.
• Any filters or slicers that are currently applied.
• The visibility of visuals on the page (what's hidden or showing).
• The sort order of tables or visuals.
• Anything in focus or "spotlight" mode.

By combining these two features, you can save specific slicer selections into bookmarks and assign them to buttons, creating a curated, app-like experience for your end-users.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Sync Slicers with Bookmarks

Let's walk through a common scenario. Imagine you have a sales dashboard that shows performance across different regions and time periods. You want to create quick-access buttons for "Last Quarter - US Sales" and "YTD - Europe Sales" to save your team from having to apply these common filters manually every time.

Step 1: Get Your Report Canvas Ready

Start with a report that has at least one or two visuals (like a bar chart showing revenue) and a couple of slicers. For our example, we'll use:

• A bar chart showing "Sales by Product."
• A "Region" slicer.
• A "Date Range" slicer.

Make sure the Bookmarks and Selection panes are visible. You can enable them by going to the View tab in the ribbon and checking the boxes for Bookmarks and Selection.

Step 2: Create Your First Filtered View

First, set the slicers to the state you want to save. For our "Last Quarter - US Sales" view:

• Click on the "Region" slicer and select "US".
• Adjust the "Date Range" slicer to show data for the previous quarter.

Your report visuals should now update to reflect only the data for US sales in the last quarter.

Step 3: Add and Configure Your First Bookmark

Now that your report page is in the desired state, it's time to save it as a bookmark.

• In the Bookmarks pane, click Add. A new bookmark will appear with a generic name like "Bookmark 1."
• Rename the bookmark to something descriptive. Hover over the bookmark name, click the three dots (...), and choose Rename. Let's call it "Last Quarter - US Sales."
• Now for the most important part. Click the three dots again and notice the options: Data, Display, Current page, and more. For our goal, we need to ensure the "Data" property is checked. This tells the bookmark to save the current filter and slicer settings. By default, it's usually checked.

The "Data" checkbox is the magic toggle here. When checked, it captures the slicer state. When unchecked, it ignores it. Since we want to sync the slicer state, we keep it checked.

Step 4: Create Additional Bookmarks

Repeat the process for any other pre-set views you want to offer. To create our "YTD Europe Sales" view:

• First, reset your slicers or change them to the new state. A quick way to reset is often by clicking the "Clear selections" icon on the slicer itself.
• In the "Region" slicer, select "Europe."
• Adjust the "Date Range" slicer to be "Year to Date."
• With the report page showing the new view, click Add in the Bookmarks pane again.
• Rename this new bookmark to "YTD - Europe Sales." Double-check that the "Data" property is checked for this bookmark as well.

Step 5: Assign Bookmarks to Buttons for Easy Access

Bookmarks are saved, but they aren't very useful if your users have to find them in a developer pane. Let's add buttons to the report canvas to trigger them.

The best way to do this is with a Bookmark Navigator, which automatically creates a button for each of your bookmarks.

• Go to the Insert tab in the ribbon.
• Click on Buttons, navigate to Navigator, and then select Bookmark navigator.
• A button group will appear on your canvas, with one button for each bookmark you created: "Last Quarter - US Sales" and "YTD - Europe Sales."

Now, while holding down the Ctrl key (this is how you test buttons in Power BI Desktop), click on each button. You will see your report visuals and slicers instantly update to the state you saved in each bookmark. When you publish the report, your users can click these buttons normally.

You can also assign a bookmark to a single button widget, icon, or image by selecting it, going to the "Action" settings in the Format pane, enabling it, choosing "Bookmark" as the Type, and selecting your desired bookmark from the dropdown.

Pro Tips for Advanced Scenarios

Once you've mastered the basics, you can refine your reports even further with a few advanced techniques.

Creating a "Reset Filters" Button

A "Reset Filters" or "Clear All" button is incredibly user-friendly. To create one:

• Clear all selections from your slicers, setting them back to their default, unfiltered state.
• Add a new bookmark and name it something like "Reset."
• Insert a new button (Insert -> Buttons -> Blank), label it "Reset Filters," and assign your "Reset" bookmark to its Action property.

Decoupling a Slicer from Bookmarks

What if you want your bookmarks to change the region but leave the date slicer alone, so the user can control the date themselves? This is another common need.

• First, set up the slicer selection you want to ignore. For an "All Regions" view, clear the Region slicer but let the date stay where it is.
• In the Bookmarks pane, click Add to create your bookmark (e.g., "All Regions View").
• Select all the visuals on your page except for the date slicer you want to remain user-controlled. You can do this by holding Ctrl and clicking each item on your canvas or in the Selection pane.
• With the relevant visuals selected, go to your new bookmark, click the three dots (...), and choose Selected visuals instead of "All visuals."
• Finally, click Update on the bookmark to save this change.

Now, when you activate this bookmark, only the visuals you selected will update to their bookmarked state, and your decoupled date slicer won't be affected.

Combining Slicers and Hidden Visuals

The synergy between bookmarks, the Selection pane, and slicers is what truly unlocks powerful reporting. Imagine you have a detailed data table that you only want to show when a user clicks the "View Details" bookmark.

• Add the data table visual to your canvas.
• In the Selection pane, click the eye icon next to the table to hide it.
• Set your slicers to the desired state for the "Detailed" view.
• Create a bookmark (e.g., "Detailed View"). In the bookmark options, make sure both "Data" (for slicers) and "Display" (for visibility) are checked.
• Now, go back to your main report view, show the visuals you want in that state, and create another bookmark (e.g., "Summary View"). In that "Summary View" bookmark, make sure the detailed table is hidden first.

By toggling between these two bookmarks, you can not only change the slicer selections but also show or hide visuals, creating truly dynamic report layouts.

Final Thoughts

By syncing slicers with bookmarks, you can transform a standard Power BI report into a guided analytical application. This simple technique saves your team time, reduces confusion, and ensures everyone is looking at data through the same pre-defined lenses. Whether creating reset buttons or complex multi-view dashboards, it's a fundamental skill for any Power BI developer looking to improve their user experience.

While Power BI offers incredible control for those willing to learn its intricacies, we know that building and maintaining these types of reports still involves a lot of manual clicks, configuration, and learning curves. If you're a marketer or business owner spending too much time wrestling with complex BI tools, we built Graphed to simplify the entire process. Just connect your data sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Facebook Ads, and then ask for the dashboard you want in plain English. There's no need to manually configure slicers or sync bookmarks, our AI data analyst builds your real-time dashboards for you in seconds.