What is Underlying Data in Power BI?

Seeing a high-level number on a Power BI dashboard is great, but what happens when that number looks a little... off? Or when a manager asks, "What specific transactions make up that sales spike last Tuesday?" The answer lies in the underlying data. This article will show you what underlying data is, why it's so important for accurate reporting, and exactly how to access it in your Power BI visuals.

What Exactly Is "Underlying Data" in Power BI?

Think of a Power BI visual as the finished cake. It looks good and gives you the big picture - for example, a pie chart showing that 40% of your sales are from the West region. The underlying data is the recipe and all the individual ingredients that went into making that cake. It's the list of every single sales transaction, every customer name, and every date that Power BI summarized to create that 40% slice.

In technical terms, the underlying data is the raw, row-level detail from your data source (like an Excel sheet, Salesforce report, or SQL database) that powers your visualizations. While your chart might show a single bar for "$50,000 in Marketing Revenue," the underlying data consists of the hundreds or thousands of individual rows that add up to that final number.

Understanding the distinction is crucial:

Summarized Data: This is what you see on the dashboard. It’s an aggregate (a sum, average, count, etc.) of your raw data.
Underlying Data: These are the individual records that are being aggregated. Each row represents a specific event, transaction, or entry.

Being able to move between the summary and the details is a core skill for anyone who works with data.

Why Is Viewing Underlying Data So Important?

Getting comfortable with looking "under the hood" of your visuals is not just for advanced analysts. It’s an essential habit for anyone who needs to trust their reports and answer questions with confidence. Here’s why it’s so valuable.

1. Data Validation and Trust

This is the number one reason. Imagine you see a report claiming a 300% increase in website traffic from a single country in a day. That's an anomaly that demands investigation. By viewing the underlying data, you can inspect the actual source records. Was it a tracking error? Was it one IP address hitting your site thousands of times? Or was it a genuine, viral event? Without access to the raw data, you're left guessing and unable to trust the high-level metrics.

2. Deeper Analysis and Context

A dashboard can tell you what happened, but the underlying data often reveals why it happened. A chart might show that customer churn increased by 10% last month. That's the "what." By drilling into the underlying data, you might discover that 80% of those churned customers had a specific subscription plan or signed up through a particular marketing campaign. This context is an actionable insight that you would miss by only looking at the summarized chart.

3. Troubleshooting and Debugging

Sometimes, a visual just doesn't look right. Maybe a sales total is far lower than expected, or a category is missing entirely. Your first debugging step should be to look at the underlying data. This helps you instantly answer questions like:

Are the right filters being applied?
Is there a data quality issue in the source table (e.g., typos in a category name)?
Did the data import fail for a certain date range?

It's much faster to diagnose a problem by looking at the raw inputs than by guessing why the final output is wrong.

How to View Underlying Data in Power BI: A Step-by-Step Guide

Power BI gives you several easy ways to inspect the data behind your visuals. Let's look at the most common methods, starting with the simplest.

Method 1: "Show as a table" for the Entire Visual

This option displays the summarized data used to create the entire visual. It's the quickest way to see the aggregate values behind a chart.

Navigate to your Power BI report in either Desktop or the online Service.
Hover over the visual you want to inspect until the "More options" ellipsis (...) appears in the top-right corner.
Click the ellipsis and select Show as a table.

The visual will temporarily flip to display a simple table of the summarized data. For example, if you had a bar chart of sales by country, this view will show you a two-column table with the country name and its total sales. To return to the chart, simply click "Back to report" in the top-left.

Method 2: Inspecting a Specific Data Point

Often, you don't care about the data for the whole chart, but just for one specific part, like a single bar or a slice of a pie.

Hover over a specific data point in a visual (e.g., the bar for "Canada" in a sales by country chart).
Right-click on that data point.
From the context menu, select Show data point as a table.

A new, focused table will appear at the bottom of your report, showing only the data relevant to the point you clicked. This is incredibly useful for instantly answering targeted questions without leaving your report view.

Method 3: Exporting the True Underlying Data

The two methods above show you the summarized data. But what if you need to see the raw, unsummarized transaction rows? For that, you need to use the export feature.

Select the visual you want to examine.
Click the "More options" ellipsis (...) in the corner.
Select Export data.
A dialog box will appear. You will typically see two options: "Summarized data" and "Underlying data."
Choose Underlying data and click the Export button.

Power BI will generate a CSV or Excel file containing every single row from your data source that contributed to that visual, including all active filters. This is the ultimate source of truth and the best way to do a deep dive or share a specific subset of data with a colleague for further analysis in a spreadsheet.

Controlling User Access to Underlying Data

While access to underlying data is powerful for analysts and report creators, there are many situations where you may not want end-users to have this ability. Displaying or allowing the export of raw data could expose sensitive information (like employee salaries or customer contact details) or simply confuse business users who only need the high-level summary.

Thankfully, Power BI gives administrators fine-grained control over this.

For Report Creators: In Power BI Desktop, you can go to File > Options and settings > Options. Under "Current File," navigate to "Report settings" and you'll find an option to prevent users from exporting underlying data.
For Power BI Admins: Within the Power BI Service, you can manage permissions on a dataset-by-dataset basis. You can grant some users "Build" permissions, which allows them to fully explore and export the underlying data, while giving others read-only access to the final report without the ability to drill down or export.

Good governance means making data accessible while also ensuring it stays secure and appropriate for the audience.

Final Thoughts

Being comfortable moving between a visual summary and its underlying data is what separates a passive report viewer from an active data analyst. It is a fundamental skill for building trustworthy reports, troubleshooting issues quickly, and uncovering the deep, actionable insights that move a business forward.

Exploring data, asking questions, and drilling down shouldn't feel like a chore. At Graphed, we’ve made this process as simple as having a conversation. After securely connecting your data sources, you can ask for details in plain English, like "Show me the top 10 products by sales in Illinois last month" or "List the individual marketing campaign spends from last week." Graphed gives you back the raw data or a clean visualization instantly, enabling a natural curiosity that helps you discover more without ever leaving the dashboard or exporting a file.