07 · Drill-through, Tooltips & Bookmarks¶

A single page crammed with every detail is hard to read. Power BI gives you several ways to keep the main page simple and let readers go deeper on demand: drill-down within a visual, drill-through to a detail page, rich tooltips, and bookmarks for saved views. Each works by passing filter context from one place to another — once you see that, they stop feeling like magic.

Drill-down (within a visual)¶

Put a hierarchy on an axis — Date[Year], Date[Quarter], Date[Month], or DimProduct[Category] then DimProduct[Product]. The visual header gains arrows:

Drill down (single arrow, then click a data point) — go into that one member.
Go to next level (double arrow) — show the next level for all members.
Expand all down one level (forked arrow) — show both levels together (e.g. "Camping Trail Tent").

Drill-down stays on the same visual. It's the right tool for exploring a hierarchy.

Drill-through (to another page)¶

A drill-through page is a detail page that receives a filter from wherever the user right-clicked.

Step by step: a Product Details page¶

Add a page named Product Details.
Select the page canvas (no visual selected). In the Visualizations pane, find the Drill through section and drag DimProduct[Product] into it.
Keep Cross-report off and Keep all filters on (the default — explained below).
Build the page: a card with [Total Amount], a card with [Total Units], a table of DimStore[Store], Date[Year Month], [Total Amount].
Power BI adds a Back button automatically at the top left (a button with the "Back" action). Ctrl+click it in Desktop to use it.
Go to the main page. Right-click the Trail Tent bar in any visual that shows Product → Drill through → Product Details.

Expected on the detail page for Trail Tent (Level 2 sample, 2025 rows only): Total Amount 360, Units 3; rows Denver 2025-01 240 and Austin 2025-02 120.

Keep all filters means other filters on the source visual (for example, a Region slicer set to West) also travel. With West selected, the Trail Tent drill-through shows only Denver: 240, 2 units.

You can drill through on a measure too: put a measure in the drill-through well and choose "Used as category" or "Summarized" to control when the option appears.

Report page tooltips¶

Instead of a tooltip listing field values, show a whole mini page:

New page TT Region. In Format → Page information, turn on Allow use as tooltip. In Canvas settings, choose Type Tooltip (a small canvas).
Put a small line chart (Year Month × Total Amount) and a card on it.
In the page's Tooltip field well (Visualizations pane, when the page is selected), add DimStore[Region].
On the main page, select the region bar chart → Format → Properties → Tooltips, set Type Report page, Page TT Region (or leave it Auto, which matches by the field).

Hover the West bar: the tooltip page renders filtered to West — January 240, February 190, March 240.

Bookmarks¶

A bookmark captures a page's state: filters and slicers, sort order, drill location, visibility of visuals, and which page is shown. Open View → Bookmarks and View → Selection.

Step by step: a chart/table toggle¶

On the main page, place a column chart (Amount by Category) and a table with the same data exactly on top of each other.
In the Selection pane, hide the table (eye icon). Add a bookmark Show Chart.
Hide the chart, show the table. Add bookmark Show Table.
For both bookmarks, open … and untick Data — so switching views doesn't reset the user's slicer selections. Keep Display ticked (visibility) and Current page.
Insert two buttons (Insert → Buttons → Blank), labelled Chart and Table. Set each button's Action → Type: Bookmark, and the right bookmark.
Alternatively, group both bookmarks into a bookmark navigator (Insert → Buttons → Navigator → Bookmark navigator), which highlights the active one.

The Data / Display / Current page checkboxes on each bookmark are the part most people miss, and they explain most "my bookmark reset my filters" complaints.

How It Actually Works¶

Drill-through builds a filter from the data point the user right-clicked. Internally, the clicked cell's coordinates (Product = "Trail Tent", and with Keep all filters, every filter in effect on that visual — slicers, page filters, the visual's own filters) are serialized as a filter set, the target page is opened, and those filters are applied to it as page-level filters, visible in the target page's Filters pane. Every visual on the target page then sends its DAX query with that filter context. Nothing is precomputed; the detail page is just a page with filters injected.

Report page tooltips work the same way, with the hovered data point's filters injected into the tooltip page's queries. That's why tooltip pages must stay light: each hover fires fresh queries for every visual on the tooltip page.

A bookmark is stored as JSON describing the state of each visual (visible/hidden, sort, drill level, selected data points) and, if Data is ticked, the full filter state of the page. Applying it replays that state. It does not store query results. Personal bookmarks in the service work the same way but are saved per user.

Common mistakes¶

Drill-through field not on the source visual. The right-click option only appears if the source visual has the drill-through field (or a field that maps to it via the model).
Keep all filters surprises — users drilling from a filtered page see "missing" data. Tell them in a subtitle which filters came through, e.g. a card with SELECTEDVALUE(DimStore[Region], "All regions").
Bookmarks capturing Data when they should only toggle visibility.
Heavy tooltip pages that make hovering slow.

Exercise¶

Build the Product Details drill-through and verify Trail Tent: 360 / 3 units, and with West selected, 240 / 2 units.
Build the region tooltip page and check East: January 80, February 150, March blank.
Build the chart/table toggle with bookmarks that do not capture Data. Test that a Category slicer selection survives switching views.