What is Drillthrough in Power BI?

Power BI dashboards are fantastic at giving you that 10,000-foot view of your business. But what happens when a number on a chart makes you raise an eyebrow, and you need to see the exact details behind it? You need a way to go from a broad summary to a specific, granular view instantly. This is precisely what drillthrough is for. This article will walk you through exactly how to set up and use the drillthrough feature to make your Power BI reports dynamic and deeply insightful.

Understanding Power BI Drillthrough: From Summary to Specifics

Think of your main dashboard as the executive summary of a financial report. It tells you the total revenue, total expenses, and profit margin. Now, imagine you see an unusually high expense number and want to see the individual transactions that make up that total. In the physical world, you’d find the specific folder with all the receipts. In Power BI, drillthrough is that action - it lets you "go to the receipt folder."

Essentially, drillthrough lets you link a high-level data point on one report page (the source) to a completely different, more detailed page (the destination). When you use the drillthrough, Power BI takes you to that destination page and automatically filters it based on the data point you selected on the source page. This keeps your main dashboards clean and uncluttered while providing all the granular detail your team needs just a right-click away.

Drillthrough vs. Drill Down: What's the Difference?

Before we go further, it's important to clarify a common point of confusion. Drillthrough and Drill Down sound similar, but they perform different tasks.

• Drill Down: This happens within the same visual. It allows you to explore deeper levels of a hierarchy. For example, if you have a sales chart by year, you can drill down to see quarters, then months, then days, all within that single chart.

• Drillthrough: This navigates you to a different page. It takes the entire context of a data point (like "Sales for the 'Electronics' category") and uses it to filter a separate, dedicated "details" page.

To put it simply: drill down goes deeper into one visual, while drillthrough takes you to a new view altogether.

How to Set Up a Drillthrough in Power BI: A Step-by-Step Guide

Setting up a drillthrough is a two-part process: first, you prepare your "destination" page, and then you use it from your "source" page. Let's build a simple example. Imagine we have a main dashboard showing total sales by product category, and we want to be able to see a detailed list of every product sold within a chosen category.

Step 1: Create Your Destination Page

Your first step is to create the page that will show the detailed information. This is called the "drillthrough page" or "destination page."

1. Create a new page in your Power BI report. Give it a descriptive name, like "Product Details."

2. Populate this page with the visuals that provide the granular detail you need. For our example, a simple table showing Product Name, Units Sold, and Revenue would be perfect. You could also add other visuals, like sales over time for the selected category.

At this point, this page is just a normal report page. Now, we'll give it its special drillthrough powers.

Step 2: Assign the Drillthrough Field

This is the magic step that tells Power BI, "When someone sends information to this page, filter it using this specific data field."

1. With nothing selected on your "Product Details" page, click on the page itself to bring up the page-level formatting options in the Visualizations pane.

2. Look for a section at the bottom of the pane labeled "Drillthrough." You'll see a box that says "Add drill-through fields here."

3. From your Fields pane, drag the field you want to filter by into this box. In our example, we want to see details for a product category, so we would drag the Product Category field into the drillthrough well.

Once you drop the field into the well, two things happen immediately:

• Power BI automatically adds a "Back" button to your report page. This is a pre-configured button that will take users back to the page they came from.

• A setting called "Keep all filters" will be toggled on by default. In most cases, you'll want to leave this on. It ensures that any other filters active on the source page (like a date slicer) are also passed to your drillthrough page.

Step 3: Hide the Drillthrough Page

This is an optional but highly recommended best practice. A drillthrough page isn't meant to be navigated to directly from the main page tabs. It should only be accessible through the drillthrough action itself. Hiding it keeps your report clean and prevents user confusion.

To hide it, simply right-click on the page tab at the bottom and select Hide Page. The tab will turn gray, indicating it's hidden from the published view but still functional for drillthrough.

Using Your New Drillthrough Action

Now that your destination page is configured, it's time to use it from your main report (the source page).

1. Navigate back to your primary dashboard page where you have a visual that uses the Product Category field (like a bar chart showing Sales by Category).

2. Right-click on one of the data points in that visual, for example, the bar representing the "Computers" category.

3. In the context menu that appears, you’ll now see a "Drillthrough" option. Hover over it, and you will see the name of your destination page, "Product Details," appear as a selectable option.

4. Click "Product Details." Power BI will instantly navigate you to that page, and all the visuals on it will be filtered to show data only for the "Computers" category.

That's it! To go back, simply Ctrl+click the back arrow, and you'll be returned to your main dashboard page, ready to explore another category.

Tips and Best Practices for Effective Drillthroughs

Once you've mastered the basics, you can apply a few techniques to make your drillthroughs even more powerful and user-friendly.

Create Explicit Drillthrough Buttons

The right-click method is functional but not always obvious to new users. For a better user experience, you can create a dedicated button that guides them.

1. On your source page, go to the Insert tab and add a Button.

2. With the button selected, go to the Format pane and find the Action settings.

3. Turn the Action on, set the Type to "Drill through," and select your destination page ("Product Details") from the Destination dropdown.

4. You can also add text to the button, telling users what it will do, like "View Category Details". You can then format the button so that it is disabled when no category is selected.

Now, instead of right-clicking, a user can simply click a product category in your chart and then click your clearly-labeled button to drill through for more details.

Use Drillthrough for More Than Just Tables

Don't limit your drillthrough pages to just tables of raw data. The destination page is a full-fledged report canvas. You could create a drillthrough page for a specific marketing campaign that shows KPIs, trend lines, and demographic charts all filtered to that single campaign. This allows you to create detailed, single-purpose pages that tell a complete story about a specific data point.

Consider Cross-Report Drillthrough

Did you know you can drillthrough to a report in a completely different file? If you have two separate reports published in the same Power BI workspace (e.g., a "Sales Overview" report and a "Marketing Deep Dive" report), you can set up a cross-report drillthrough. It works much the same way: you enable the option in the Power BI Desktop settings and then choose a destination page from any report in your workspace, allowing you to create a seamless, connected analytics experience.

Communicate and Keep Your Audience in Mind

When you have a drillthrough option on your page, it is always a good idea to inform the user that it exists. You can do this through tooltips via visual headers or by adding text to the drillthrough visual.

Final Thoughts

Drillthrough is a fundamental feature in Power BI that transforms flat, static reports into interactive, multi-layered dashboards. By providing a direct path from a high-level summary to the underlying details, you empower your audience to explore data, ask follow-up questions, and find insights on their own. Once you learn how to set up destination pages and link sources, you'll find countless ways to make your reports more valuable.

Crafting intricate, multi-page Power BI reports like this is powerful, but it involves a lot of manual clicks, formatting, and careful configuration. We’ve found that while the end result is useful, the process of getting there can slow down teams that just need quick answers. That’s why we built Graphed. Instead of manually building charts and connecting them with drillthrough actions, you can simply ask for what you need in plain English. You can start wide with a request like, "Show me sales by product category," and then ask a follow-up question like, "Okay, now show me the top products sold in the Computers category," just like a real conversation. It allows a deeper exploration of your data, without all the clicks and setup.