Hidden gems! Power BI is full of them…Sometimes, you find them after thorough research, and sometimes they just appear out of nowhere.

This post won’t be long – it’s just an homage to Power BI and one of its handy features that will make your life easier in specific circumstances.

Just recently, I was working on a report that had a slicer with many distinct values. In order to illustrate the challenge, I will use (as usual) the sample Contoso database. Now, imagine that I want to check the total sales amount for the product called “Contoso Coffee Maker 5C E0900 Silver“:

You see what I was talking about? Do I need to scroll down all the way to my desired product? It would be so tedious work to do.

Hidden gem called – Search

Of course not! There is a nice, quick, and easy solution to this challenge! Once I click on three dots in the upper right corner of the slicer, the first option I see is Search. And, if I click on it…

I get a nice Search bar on top of the slicer’s drop down list! I can now enter the item I’m searching for, and Power BI will narrow down the list:

And, instead of scrolling down to find my desired product among 1000 others, I can now easily locate it between 4 of them:

Mission accomplished – my users can now quickly search for the specific value within the slicer.

Thanks for reading!

Last Updated on February 6, 2021 by Nikola

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