How to Add a Clear Filter Button in Power BI

Adding a "clear all filters" button to your Power BI report is a small touch that makes a huge difference in user experience. It lets users instantly reset slicers and filters back to the default view with a single click - a simple, professional feature that prevents confusion. This article will walk you through the exact steps to create one using Power BI's built-in bookmark functionality.

Why a 'Clear Filter' Button Is a Game Changer for Your Reports

Imagine a user interacting with your report. They click on a few regions in a map, select several product categories from a list, and adjust a date range. Now, to see the big picture again, they have to manually find and undo each of these selections one by one. It’s tedious, inefficient, and can easily lead to frustration or misinterpretation if they miss a hidden filter.

A dedicated "Clear All Filters" button solves this problem elegantly. It offers several key advantages:

• Improved User Experience (UX): It provides an intuitive, one-click solution to reset the entire report, making it much faster and more enjoyable to explore the data.
• Reduced Confusion: Users can confidently explore different data slices, knowing they always have an easy way back to a "clean slate." This prevents them from analyzing a mistakenly filtered view.
• Professionalism and Polish: Little details like this elevate your report from a simple data dump to a polished, professional-grade dashboard. It shows you’ve thought about how people will actually use it.

Ultimately, your goal is to make it as easy as possible for people to find insights. A reset button removes friction from that process.

The Core Concept: Using Bookmarks to Save a "State"

The magic behind the "Clear Filter" button in Power BI is a feature called Bookmarks. You might think of bookmarks as just saving a link to a webpage, but in Power BI, they are much more powerful.

A Power BI bookmark captures the entire state of a report page at a specific moment. This includes:

• The current filters and slicers applied.
• The sort order of tables and charts.
• The visibility of visuals (using the Selection Pane).
• The focus or "drilled-down" state of a visual.

Our strategy is simple: we'll set our report to the desired default, unfiltered state, and then create a bookmark to "save" that state. Afterward, we will create a button and link its action to our new bookmark. When a user clicks the button, it will trigger the bookmark and instantly revert the page to that saved, clear state.

Step-by-Step Guide: Creating Your 'Clear All Filters' Button

Let's walk through the exact process to add this functionality to your report. It only takes a few minutes.

Step 1: Set Your Report to the Default State

First, you need to configure your report page to look exactly how you want it to appear when the user clicks the "reset" button. This means clearing all active filters.

Go through every slicer on your report page and reset it to its default, unfiltered selection. Don't forget to check the Filters pane as well. If you have any page-level or report-level filters applied, make sure they are cleared or set to the default you want.

This is the most important step. Whatever state the page is in right now is what the bookmark will save.

Step 2: Add and Rename Your Bookmark

With your report page in its clean, default state, you're ready to create the bookmark.

1. Navigate to the View tab in the Power BI ribbon.
2. Click on Bookmarks to open the Bookmarks pane on the right side of the screen.
3. Click the Add button inside the Bookmarks pane. A new bookmark will appear with a generic name like "Bookmark 1."
4. Double-click the new bookmark (or click the ellipsis ... and select Rename) to give it a descriptive name, like “Clear Filters State” or “Default View.” Clear naming is crucial for managing your report later on.

Step 3: Insert a Button or Icon

Now you need a clickable object on your report canvas for the user to interact with. You have a few options.

• Blank Button: Go to the Insert tab, click Buttons, and select Blank. This gives you a fully customizable rectangular button.
• Icon: You can use a more intuitive icon. Some people use the "Reset" or "Back" arrow icons from the same Buttons menu.
• Image: For complete design freedom, you can insert an image (Insert > Image) using an icon you’ve downloaded - for example, a filter symbol with a slash through it or a simple "refresh" arrow.

Drag your chosen object to a logical – a clean corner or near the main slicers, is a good idea.

Step 4: Link the Button to the Bookmark

This is where you connect the button's action to the bookmark you created.

1. Select the button or image you just added on your report canvas.
2. With the object selected, open the Format pane on the right.
3. Toggle the Action setting to On.
4. Expand the Action settings. For Type, select Bookmark from the dropdown menu.
5. In the Bookmark dropdown that appears, select the bookmark you created earlier (e.g., “Clear Filters State”).

Step 5: Style Your Button and Add a Tooltip

Finally, make your button look good and communicate its purpose clearly.

• If you're using a button object, you can customize its appearance under the Style (or Button) section in the Format pane. You can add text (like "Clear Filters"), change fonts, colors, and borders to match your report's theme.
• Regardless of what you use, make sure to add a tooltip. In the Action settings, there is a field for Tooltip. Add a simple, clear description like “Click to reset all filters on this page.” Now, when a user hovers over the button, this text will appear, explaining exactly what it does.

To test it out, apply a few filters on your page, then hold Ctrl + Click on the new button in Power BI Desktop. The report should instantly revert to its default view!

Advanced Tips and Considerations

Once you’ve mastered the basic reset button, you can apply the same concepts in more advanced ways.

Scoped Reset: Clearing Only Specific Slicers

What if you want a button that only resets a specific group of slicers, like just the date and region filters, but leaves the product filters alone? Bookmarks can do that too.

1. Hold the Ctrl key and click to select only the slicers you want the button to control.
2. Set those specific slicers to their default state.
3. With those slicers still selected, add a new bookmark as you did before. Name it something like “Reset Date & Region.”
4. Click the ellipsis (...) next to your new bookmark and select Selected visuals. This tells the bookmark to only apply its saved state to the visuals that were selected when it was created.
5. Link a new button to this "scoped" bookmark. Now, this button will only reset the selected slicers.

A Common Point of Confusion: The 'Data' Checkbox

When you edit a bookmark (by clicking the ellipsis ...), you’ll see several checkboxes, including "Data". A lot of online tutorials create confusion around this setting. Let's clear it up:

• For a 'Clear Filter' button, you MUST leave the 'Data' box CHECKED. The "Data" property is what tells the bookmark to save the current state of filters, slicers, cross-highlighting, and sorting. If you uncheck it, clicking your reset button will do nothing to the filters.
• So, when would you uncheck it? You uncheck 'Data' for a navigation bookmark – for example, if you wanted a button to take you to a different page but keep the slicer selections you’ve already made. By disabling 'Data', the bookmark changes your view (Display) without altering your filter context (Data).

Final Thoughts

Creating a "Clear All Filters" button is an excellent example of how a small, thoughtful detail can significantly improve a Power BI report. By using bookmarks, you create a more intuitive and professional experience that empowers users to explore data freely, without the fear of getting lost in their own filter selections.

While an interactive report in Power BI is a powerful tool, getting all your data connected, cleaned, and ready for visualization is often the biggest hurdle. At Graphed, we focus on simplifying that entire workflow. We built Graphed to connect to all your marketing and sales sources in seconds and allow you to build real-time dashboards just by describing what you want in plain English. It removes the steep technical curve, letting you move from raw data to actionable insights in a fraction of the time.