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How to Not Show Total in Power BI Table

Cody Schneider••8 min read

Power BI tables are fantastic for displaying detailed data, but they have a habit of automatically adding a "Total" row that you might not always want or need. Removing it should be simple, and thankfully, it is. This tutorial will walk you through several easy methods for hiding totals in Power BI, from a quick toggle in the formatting options to more custom solutions using DAX.

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Why Remove Totals from a Power BI Table?

Before jumping into the "how," it helps to understand the "why." You're not just being picky, there are good reasons to disable the total row in your visuals:

  • Improved Clarity and Focus: Sometimes, a total row distracts from the main point of the table. If you want your audience to focus on comparing individual line items, removing the grand total can clean up the visual and direct their attention where it matters most.
  • When a "Total" is Meaningless: Have you ever seen a table that sums up percentages or unit prices? It rarely makes sense. Totaling a "Satisfaction Score" column gives you a number, but not a meaningful insight. In these cases, the total isn't just unnecessary - it's potentially misleading.
  • Aesthetic and Design Choices: A cluttered visual is an ineffective visual. For smaller, embedded tables in a larger dashboard, removing the total row can make the entire report look cleaner and less crowded. You might be presenting summarized KPIs in separate 'card' visuals, making the table's total row redundant.
  • Creating Summary Tables Elsewhere: Your reporting strategy may involve presenting raw data in one table and a separate, aggregated summary in another visual. To avoid repetition and confusion, you would want to disable the totals on the main data table.

Method 1: The Quickest Fix for Any Table (Using the Format Pane)

This is the most straightforward way to remove the entire total row from a standard Table or a Matrix visual. It takes about ten seconds and requires zero code.

Follow these steps:

  1. Click on the table visual on your report canvas to select it. You'll know it's selected when you see a border appear around it and the visualization panes update.
  2. Navigate to the Format your visual pane. This is the icon that looks like a paintbrush, located right next to the "Build a visual" pane.
  3. In the format options, look for a section named Totals. Click to expand it if it's not already open.
  4. You will see a master toggle simply labeled "Totals" (or "Grand Total" depending on the visual). Click the toggle to switch it from "On" to "Off."

That's it. The entire total row at the bottom of your table will instantly disappear. This method works perfectly for all-or-nothing scenarios where you just don't want the grand total shown at all.

What About Matrices?

If you're using a Matrix visual, the process is nearly identical. You'll still go to the Format your visual pane, but the section will be called Grand total. A single toggle here turns the overall final total on or off.

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Method 2: Gaining More Control with a Matrix Visual

What if you want some totals but not others? This is where the Matrix visual really shines. A Matrix is similar to a table but allows you to group data by rows and columns, creating a structure much like a pivot table in Excel. It also offers more granular control over totals.

For a Matrix, Power BI distinguishes between subtotals for specific groups and the final grand total.

How to Turn Subtotals On or Off

You can control subtotals that appear for each group or category within your matrix. For example, if you have Sales by 'Year' then by 'Quarter', a subtotal would give you the total for each year.

  1. Select your Matrix visual.
  2. Go to the Format your visual pane.
  3. Expand the Row subtotals or Column subtotals section. Inside, you will find toggles to turn them on or off completely.
  4. You also get positioning controls. For instance, in "Row subtotals," you can use the 'Position' dropdown to choose whether the subtotal appears at the top or bottom of its respective group.

Using these settings, you could have a Matrix that shows subtotals for each year but has the overall grand total turned off, giving you a very specific view of your data.

Method 3: When You Need Ultimate Customization with DAX

Sometimes the built-in formatting options aren't quite enough. What if you want a total row, but you want a specific column to display something other than its sum - or better yet, nothing at all? For this level of control, you'll need to write a little DAX (Data Analysis Expressions).

Don't worry, it's less intimidating than it sounds.

The magic trick is to use a DAX function that can tell whether a calculation is being performed for a single item (a row in the table) or for the total row. Two common functions for this are HASONEVALUE() and ISINSCOPE().

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Example: Showing a Total for One Column but Hiding it for Another

Imagine your table has two columns: "Total Revenue" and "Average Unit Price." It makes sense to sum the total revenue, but summing the average unit price is meaningless. You'd rather that cell be blank in the total row. Here’s how you’d do it.

First, instead of just dragging 'Unit Price' into your table, you need to create a new DAX measure.

  1. Navigate to the "Modeling" tab in the Power BI ribbon and click on New measure.
  2. Enter the following DAX formula in the formula bar:

Avg Unit Price Display = IF( HASONEVALUE(Products[ProductName]), // Checks if we are on a single product row AVERAGE(Sales[UnitPrice]), // If yes, calculate the average unit price BLANK() // If no (we're in the total row), show nothing )

Let's break that down:

  • HASONEVALUE(Products[ProductName]) is the condition. It returns TRUE only when the formula is being calculated for a single, distinct product name. For the total row, it's looking at all product names, so it returns FALSE.
  • AVERAGE(Sales[UnitPrice]) is what happens when the condition is true. It calculates the average unit price for the product on that line.
  • BLANK() is what happens when the condition is false. It simply leaves the cell empty in the total row.

Now, just use your new "Avg Unit Price Display" measure in the table instead of the original 'Unit Price' field. You will have a column that calculates correctly for each row and shows a clean, blank cell where the illogical total used to be.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

If you've turned off totals but they're still showing up, or the numbers seem wrong, here are a few common culprits to check.

1. Mistaking a Matrix for a Table

It's easy to get the two confused at a glance. Remember, a Matrix has separate controls for Subtotals and Grand Totals. Double-check which visual you're using. If it's a Matrix, ensure you've toggled off the correct total type.

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2. The "Total" is Part of Your Raw Data

In rare cases, your source data (from Excel, for instance) might actually contain a row that is literally named "Total." Power BI is just displaying what it's been given. In this situation, the fix isn't in Power BI's formatting but in the data cleaning stage. You'll need to open the Power Query Editor (Transform data) and filter out that specific row before it ever gets to your report.

3. Implicit vs. Explicit Measures

When you drag a numeric field directly into a table visual, Power BI creates an "implicit measure" for you, usually a sum. While convenient, this offers less control. If your totals are acting strangely, it's often better to create an "explicit measure" using DAX, such as Total Sales = SUM(Sales[Revenue]). This simple measure gives you a solid foundation that behaves more predictably and is easier to customize down the line (like with the IF(HASONEVALUE()) pattern).

Final Thoughts

Controlling the display of totals is a small but important part of building clean and effective reports in Power BI. Whether you need a quick kill-switch using the format pane for a simple table, granular control over subtotals in a matrix, or a custom blank result with DAX, you have options to ensure your visuals communicate exactly what you intend.

Learning all the menus, formatting toggles, and DAX functions can take time that you'd rather spend analyzing data. We built Graphed to streamline this entire process. Instead of hunting through panes, you can just ask in plain language, "show me a table of revenue by city and sort it descending, without a total row." We connect to your live data sources and build the dashboard for you, minus the tedious manual work. It lets you focus on the insights, not the setup.

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