How to Create Tabs in Power BI

Building a slick, organized Power BI report often means using tabs to separate different views of your data. This approach prevents visual clutter and guides your users through a logical story. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to add, manage, and customize tabs - or as Power BI calls them, "pages" - to make your dashboards more intuitive and professional.

Why Use Pages (or "Tabs") in Your Power BI Reports?

Before diving into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Spreading your data visualizations across multiple pages isn't just about tidiness, it’s a strategic choice that dramatically improves the user experience. By doing so, you can:

• Improve Clarity: Group related visuals together on a single page. For example, one page can provide a high-level executive summary, another can break down website traffic, and a third can focus on sales performance.
• Create a Narrative: Guide your audience through your data in a structured way. Start with a broad overview on the first page, and use subsequent pages to drill down into more specific details.
• Enhance Performance: Loading a single page with dozens of complex visuals can slow down your report. Splitting them across multiple pages means Power BI only has to render the visuals on the currently active page, often resulting in faster load times.
• Simplify Navigation: A well-organized report with clear page names is far easier for a user to navigate than a single cluttered canvas.

The Basics: How to Add and Manage Pages

Creating and managing pages in Power BI is straightforward. All the action happens in the page navigation area at the bottom of the Power BI Desktop window.

1. Adding a New Page

To add a new page, simply click the plus (+) icon in the page navigation bar. A new page, typically named something like "Page 2," will appear.

2. Renaming a Page

Default names like "Page 1" and "Page 2" aren't helpful. Give your pages descriptive names that clearly communicate their content.

To rename a page, either:

• Double-click on the page name in the navigation bar.
• Right-click on the page name and select "Rename Page."

Type the new name (e.g., "Sales Summary," "Marketing KPIs") and press Enter. Clear names are the first step to a user-friendly report.

3. Duplicating a Page

Often, you’ll want to create a new page that has a similar layout, set of filters, or a specific visual from an existing page. Instead of rebuilding it from scratch, you can duplicate it.

Right-click on the page you want to copy and select "Duplicate Page." Power BI will create an exact copy, which you can then modify as needed. This is a huge time-saver for maintaining a consistent design across your report.

4. Reordering Pages

The order of your pages matters for creating a logical flow. To reorder a page, simply click and drag it to your desired position in the navigation bar.

5. Hiding Pages

Sometimes you need to create pages that you don't want users to see in the main navigation. These are often used for drill-through reports or as complex tooltips.

To hide a page, right-click it and select "Hide Page." The page name will become grayed out and will not be visible to end-users when you publish the report. They can still access it through buttons or visuals you specifically configure to lead there.

Advanced Navigation: Building an Interactive Tab Bar

While the default page navigation at the bottom is functional, you can create a more professional and integrated navigation system directly within your report canvas using buttons, shapes, and bookmarks. This makes your Power BI report feel less like a set of slides and more like a custom application.

Method 1: Using the Page Navigator Button (The Easy Way)

Power BI now has a built-in feature that makes creating a navigation menu incredibly easy. This should be your go-to method for most reports.

1. Go to the Insert tab on the Power BI ribbon.
2. Click on Buttons, hover over Navigator, and then select Page Navigator.
3. Power BI will instantly create a navigation bar on your canvas with a button for every visible page in your report. It automatically syncs with your page names and order!

You can customize the appearance of these buttons—changing colors, outline, shape, and text—in the Format pane. Critically, copy this navigator visual and paste it onto every page of your report in the exact same position for a seamless experience.

Method 2: Creating a Custom Nav with Buttons and Bookmarks (The Flexible Way)

If you need more control over the look and feel, or if you want to navigate to specific views instead of just pages, the manual button-and-bookmark method is powerful.

Step 1: Create a Bookmark for Each Page

Think of a bookmark as a "snapshot" of your report's state—it saves the current page, filters, and slicer selections. We'll use bookmarks to tell our buttons where to go.

1. Go to the report page you want to link to (e.g., your "Sales Summary" page).
2. Go to the View tab and make sure the Bookmarks pane is enabled.
3. In the Bookmarks pane, click Add. Rename the new bookmark something descriptive, like "Go to Sales."
4. Repeat this process for every page you want in your navigation menu.

Step 2: Add Navigation Buttons or Shapes

Now, let's build the visual elements for our navigation bar.

1. On the Insert tab, click Buttons and select Blank. Alternatively, you can insert a Shape like a rectangle.
2. Position the button or shape on your report canvas, usually near the top as a header.
3. Use the Format pane to customize it. Under Button Text (or Shape Style - Text), add a label like "Sales Summary." Adjust fonts, colors, and borders to match your design.
4. Create a button or shape for each navigation link you need.

Step 3: Link Your Buttons to Bookmarks

This is where you make the buttons interactive.

1. Select the button you just created (e.g., your "Sales Summary" button).
2. In the Format pane, find the Action section and turn it on.
3. Expand the Action section.
4. Repeat this for every button, linking each one to its correct bookmark. Now, when a user Ctrl + clicks on a button in Power BI Desktop (or just clicks it in the published report), they will be taken to that specific bookmarked view.

Remember to copy and paste your completed navigation bar onto all of your report pages to maintain consistency.

Best Practices for Report Navigation

Now that you know how to create tabs and navigation, here are a few tips to ensure your report is effective and easy to use:

• Keep Names Short and Clear: Page names should immediately tell the user what they're going to see. "Sales" is good, "Detailed Analysis of Fiscal Year Sales Performance by Region and Product Category" is bad.
• Design a Logical Flow: Organize pages from a high-level overview to more granular detail. A typical flow is Summary > Category Breakdown > Item-Level Detail.
• Don't Go Overboard: More than 5-7 main pages can be overwhelming. If you need more views, consider using drill-through pages instead of adding another tab to the main navigation.
• Maintain Consistency: Your navigation bar, headers, and key filters should be in the same place on every page. This consistency makes your report feel polished and predictable for the user.

Final Thoughts

Organizing your Power BI report with multiple pages is fundamental to creating a professional and user-friendly experience. By mastering the simple tools for creating and managing pages, and by building an intuitive navigation system with buttons and bookmarks, you can transform a dense and confusing dataset into a clear, actionable story that anyone can understand.

While mastering specific features in tools like Power BI is a great skill, we know that getting bogged down in menus, formatting panes, and configurations still takes you away from finding actual insights. We created Graphed because we believe anyone should be able to instantly visualize their data without the steep learning curve. Instead of manually building pages, creating bookmarks, and aligning buttons, you simply ask in plain English for the dashboard you need, and our AI builds it in seconds, pulling live data from all your connected sources.