What Is Include and Exclude in Power BI?
When you're building a report, you’re usually focused on what data to add. Power BI's Include and Exclude features flip that on its head, giving you powerful analytical tools by focusing on what you temporarily want to see or remove. This article will walk you through how to use these simple but effective features to speed up your analysis and tell a clearer data story.
What Are Include and Exclude in Power BI?
At their core, Include and Exclude are interactive, temporary filtering actions you can perform directly on a visual. Instead of going to the Filters pane and setting up complex rules, you can simply right-click on your data points and instantly change your view. Think of them as shortcuts for quick data exploration.
The "Include" Function
The Include function lets you select one or more data points on a chart and temporarily hide everything else. It’s like putting a spotlight on a specific segment of your data for a closer look. For example, if you have a chart showing sales across 50 states, you can select California, Texas, and Florida, right-click, and choose "Include" to see a visual of just those three states.
It acts as a temporary drill-down, allowing you to focus your investigation without building a new visual or a permanent filter.
The "Exclude" Function
The Exclude function does the opposite: it allows you to select one or more data points and temporarily remove them from the visual. It’s perfect for cleaning up a chart without permanently altering your dataset. Have a massive, one-day spike in website traffic that was caused by bots? Exclude that data point to get a more realistic view of your actual traffic trends. Did some "test" data accidentally show up in your sales report? Exclude it to present a cleaner, more accurate picture.
Why Bother with Include and Exclude?
These features might seem basic, but they unlock a more fluid and intuitive way to interact with your data. They bridge the gap between static reporting and dynamic analysis, helping you find answers faster.
Speed Up Your Ad-Hoc Analysis
Imagine you’re in a meeting presenting a sales dashboard. A manager points to your sales by category chart and asks, “Interesting. I want to see how our top two categories, ‘Laptops’ and ‘Smartphones,’ are performing relative to each other, without all the other noise.”
Instead of fumbling with the Filters pane, you can simply Ctrl + Click “Laptops” and “Smartphones,” right-click, and select Include. Instantly, the chart updates. You’ve answered the question in seconds, maintaining the flow of the conversation. This on-the-fly capability is the primary strength of these features.
It turns a presentation into an interactive data exploration session, where you can follow your team's curiosity and dig into unexpected questions as they arise.
Clean Up Visuals Without Complex DAX or Queries
Data is rarely perfect. You’ll often find outliers or irrelevant entries that distort your charts and make them hard to read.
Outliers: A bar chart showing average delivery time might be skewed by one order that took 90 days, making every other bar look tiny and indiscernible. By right-clicking that outlier bar and selecting Exclude, the chart's axis will rescale, revealing the meaningful pattern in the rest of your data.
Irrelevant Categories: Perhaps your data contains an "Undefined" or "Customer Return" category that you don’t want to factor into your revenue analysis. Simply Exclude it from your pie chart or bar chart to focus on the segments that matter.
Using Exclude is much faster than going back into Power Query to filter out the source data, especially when you only want to remove it for a single visual on your report.
Tell a Better Data Story
Effective data visualization is about guiding your audience’s attention. Include and Exclude are excellent storytelling tools for this.
For example, you could start a presentation with a chart showing website traffic from all social media channels. After establishing the big picture, you could say, “You'll notice most of our growth this quarter came from one specific place.” Then, you select the bar for "TikTok," choose Include, and show how that single channel drove massive results. This creates a moment of focus and impact. Afterward, you can easily remove the filter to return to the overall view, seamlessly weaving your narrative together.
How to Use Include in Power BI (A Step-by-Step Guide)
Let’s walk through a practical example. Say we have a bar chart showing total revenue by product category and we want to focus solely on our "Electronics" and "Appliances" categories.
Step 1: Select Your Data PointsOn your bar chart, find the bars corresponding to "Electronics" and "Appliances." To select more than one, hold down the Ctrl key while you click on each bar. The selected bars will be highlighted.
Step 2: Right-Click and Choose IncludeWith the bars selected, right-click on either one of them. A context menu will appear. From this menu, select Include.
Step 3: Analyze the ResultThe visual will instantly update. All other categories will disappear, leaving only the "Electronics" and "Appliances" bars. This allows you to compare their performance directly, without any other distractions. You'll also notice a small filter icon appear in the header of the visual, indicating that a temporary filter is active.
How to Use Exclude in Power BI (A Step-by-Step Guide)
Now, let's try excluding data. Imagine we have a pie chart showing marketing leads by source, but there's a small, distracting slice for "Internal Testing" that we want to remove for a client presentation.
Step 1: Select the Data Point to RemoveOn your pie chart, simply click on the "Internal Testing" slice. It will be highlighted.
Step 2: Right-Click and Choose ExcludeRight-click the selected slice to open the context menu. This time, choose Exclude.
Step 3: See the Cleaned-Up VisualThe "Internal Testing" slice will be removed from the pie chart, and the remaining slices will recalculate to fill 100% of the pie. The chart is now cleaner and more focused on the relevant lead sources. Again, a filter icon will appear on the visual to let you know a temporary filter is in place.
Pro Tips for Using Include and Exclude Effectively
Once you’ve mastered the basics, here are a few tips to get the most out of these features.
Managing and Removing Your Filters
One common point of confusion for new users is how to undo an Include/Exclude filter. Simply deselecting the data points won't work. The filter remains active until you manually clear it.
To see and remove your temporary filters:
Hover over the visual header.
Click the "Filters on this visual" icon (it looks like a funnel).
A pane will appear showing all active filters, including a card labeled "Included Data" or "Excluded Data."
Click the eraser icon (Clear filter) on that card to remove it and restore the visual to its original state.
This is important! Forgetting a temporary filter is active can lead to misinterpreting your data later on.
Watch How Other Visuals React
Power BI is interactive. When you use Include or Exclude on one visual, it can affect others on the same report page. If you Include sales from only "Texas" and "New York" on a bar chart, you will see a map visual zoom to those two states, and your KPI cards will update to show only the sales totals for those states. This cross-filtering is a powerful way to see how one piece of data relates to the whole picture. Be mindful of this interaction, as it’s a key part of the Power BI experience.
When Not to Use Include and Exclude
These features are designed for temporary, exploratory analysis. If you find yourself always excluding the same "Test Data" category every time you open a report, you have the wrong tool for the job. In that scenario, you should use the main Filters pane to set up a permanent filter. Here’s a simple rule of thumb:
Use Include/Exclude for answering one-off questions and for interactive data exploration during a presentation.
Use the Filters pane for persistent rules that should always apply to a visual, a page, or the entire report (e.g., always show data from the current year, or always exclude internal accounts).
Final Thoughts
Power BI's Include and Exclude features prove that powerful analysis doesn't always require complicated tools. These simple, right-click actions are built for speed and curiosity, allowing you to ask questions, clean up visuals on the fly, and dig deeper into your data without ever leaving your report.
At our core, we believe that getting answers from your data should be just as intuitive. We built Graphed because we felt that the learning curve for analytics tools was too steep. Instead of clicking menus and managing filters, we enable you to create entire dashboards and get complex answers just by asking questions in plain English. This removes the barrier between your data and the insights you need to grow your business.