How to Hide More Options in Power BI

Creating a Power BI report that's easy for others to use is just as important as the data inside it. One small detail that often gets overlooked is the "More options" ellipsis (...) that appears on every visual, which can sometimes clutter the view or give users more control than you'd like. Hiding it is a simple but powerful way to clean up your design and guide colleagues toward the most important insights without distraction.

This article will walk you through a few methods for hiding the "More options" menu in Power BI. We'll cover the quick and easy way, a more detailed approach for greater control, and explain why you'd want to do it in the first place.

Why Would You Hide the "More Options" Menu?

Before jumping into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." While the "More options" menu is useful, especially during the development phase, you may want to disable it in your final report for a few key reasons:

• Simplified User Experience: For colleagues who aren't familiar with Power BI, fewer on-screen elements can make the report feel more approachable. A clean interface prevents them from feeling overwhelmed by buttons and options they don't need.
• Better Focus: By removing extra icons, you guide your audience's attention to the data itself. You want them focused on the story your charts are telling, not on clicking every available menu to see what it does.
• Control Over Data Interaction: The "More options" menu allows users to do things like export the underlying data, change the sorting, or "show data as a table." If you have specific data governance rules or want to prevent users from accidentally exporting sensitive information, hiding this menu is an easy safeguard.
• Aesthetic and Design Cleanliness: A cluttered visual header can detract from an otherwise clean and professional-looking dashboard. Removing unnecessary icons creates a more deliberate and polished design.

Ultimately, it's about shifting the report's purpose from a flexible analysis tool to a guided, easily consumable report for your end-users.

Method 1: The Quickest Way to Hide Everything

The fastest way to remove the "More options" icon is to hide the entire visual header. This also removes the filter icon and the focus mode icon, making the top of your visual completely clean. This is the best approach when you want absolutely no icons cluttering a visual.

Here's how to do it in just a few clicks:

1. Select a Visual: First, click on the chart or table in your report that you want to modify. You'll know it's selected when a bounding box appears around it.
2. Open the Format Pane: With the visual selected, navigate to the Visualizations pane on the right side of the Power BI window. Click on the paintbrush icon to open the "Format your visual" section.
3. Go to the "General" Tab: In the format options, click on the "General" tab. This is where you'll find settings that apply to the overall visual container, not just the data points themselves.
4. Toggle "Header icons" Off: Scroll down until you see the "Header icons" option. It will be toggled on by default. Simply click the switch to turn it Off.

Instantly, the entire header bar, along with all its icons (Filter, Focus Mode, More options), will disappear from your visual in the report view. When users hover over the visual, nothing will show up in the top right corner.

The takeaway: This method is perfect for a highly polished, presentation-style dashboard where users are only meant to consume the information, not interact with the visuals in any way beyond slicing or filtering with dedicated slicers.

Method 2: A Targeted Approach to Hide Only the "More Options" Icon

What if you want to keep the "Filter" or "Focus Mode" icons but get rid of only the "More options" button? Power BI gives you granular control over exactly which icons appear in the header. This approach offers the best of both worlds: a cleaner interface without sacrificing useful features.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Select Your Visual: Just like before, click on the visual you wish to customize.
2. Go to "Format Visual" > "General": Open the formatting pane, click the paintbrush icon, and then select the "General" tab.
3. Expand "Header Icons": Find the "Header icons" setting. Make sure the main toggle is On. Below it, click the small arrow to expand the section. This will reveal a new submenu called "Icons".
4. Customize Visible Icons: Expand the "Icons" section. You'll now see a list of toggles for every potential icon that can appear on that visual's header.
5. Turn Off "More options": Find the toggle for the "More options" icon and switch it to Off.

That's it! Now when you hover over the visual, you'll still see the Filter and Focus Mode icons (and any others you left on), but the "More options" ellipsis will be gone. This prevents users from exporting data or modifying the chart while still allowing them to see applied filters or enter focus mode for a closer look.

What exactly are you hiding?

It's helpful to remember which features you're disabling when you hide the "More options" menu. By toggling it off, you prevent users from accessing several functions, including:

• Export data: This is the big one. It stops users from downloading the raw or summarized data behind the visual into a CSV or Excel file.
• Show as a table: A handy way for users to see the exact numbers behind the chart, but you might want to hide it to keep them focused on the visual trend.
• Remove: Prevents users from deleting the visual from their view (this doesn't delete it from the report itself).
• Spotlight: Dims the rest of the report page to highlight a single visual. You can achieve a similar effect with design choices instead.
• Sort axis: You may have pre-defined a specific sort order (e.g., month over month) for storytelling purposes, and disabling this prevents users from changing it.

Advanced Tip: Conditionally Hiding Icons for Different Audiences

In some situations, you might want certain people (like an analyst or manager) to have access to the "More options" menu, while general viewers should not. You can accomplish this with a creative use of Bookmarks and the Selection Pane to build different views into the same report page.

Here's a simplified version of how this trick works:

1. Duplicate Your Visual: Copy and paste the visual you want to configure. Place the duplicate directly on top of the original so they are perfectly aligned. You now have two identical visuals stacked on top of each other.
2. Configure Each Visual's Header: Select the top visual and use Method 2 to turn off the "More options" icon. This will be your "Viewer" version. Then, select the visual beneath it and ensure its "More options" icon is enabled. This is your "Admin" version.
3. Use the Selection Pane to Name Your Visuals: Go to the View tab in the Power BI ribbon and open the "Selection" Pane. Rename your two visuals so you can tell them apart, for example, "Sales Chart - Viewer" and "Sales Chart - Admin."
4. Create Your Bookmarks: Now, go to the View tab and open the "Bookmarks" Pane. Here is how you will create the two different states:
5. Assign Bookmarks to Buttons: Finally, insert two buttons onto your report page (e.g., one labeled "Admin View" and the other "Standard View"). Select a button, go to its format settings, and in the "Action" section, select "Bookmark" as the type and choose the corresponding bookmark ("Admin Mode"). Repeat for the other button. Now, users can click these buttons to toggle between the version with the ellipsis and the version without it.

This is a more advanced technique but demonstrates how you can build highly customized and role-based experiences within a single Power BI report.

Final Thoughts

Controlling the user experience is a hallmark of a great report. Hiding the "More options" menu in Power BI is a small but meaningful detail that declutters your dashboard, guides user focus, and ensures your audience interacts with the data exactly as you intended. Whether you turn off the entire header or just a specific icon, you're in full control.

While mastering details in tools like Power BI is incredibly valuable, the time spent on manual customizations can add up. At Graphed we aim to eliminate this friction entirely. We built Graphed so you can connect your data sources and create clean, interactive dashboards just by using plain English. Instead of hunting through format panes and toggles, you can simply ask for what you need and get a stunning, user-friendly report in seconds, not hours.