How to Remove Filters in Power BI
Clearing filters in Power BI is essential for ensuring you're looking at the complete dataset, not just a slice of it. Whether you’re a report creator needing to reset your canvas or a user wanting to explore a different view, understanding how to remove filters is a fundamental skill. This guide will walk you through the various ways to clear filters, from the Filters pane to slicers and report resets, so you can navigate your data with confidence.
Understanding the Different Types of Filters in Power BI
Before diving into how to remove filters, it’s helpful to know where they come from. Filters in Power BI can be applied in several different ways, and knowing the source helps you know where to look when you want to clear them.
The Filters Pane: This is the main control center for filtering. Filters here can be applied at three different levels:
Visual-level filters: These apply to a single, selected visual on the report page.
Page-level filters: These affect all visuals on a specific report page.
Report-level filters: These apply to all pages and visuals in the entire report.
Slicers: These are user-friendly, on-canvas filter controls like checkboxes, dropdowns, or sliders that allow anyone viewing the report to easily segment the data.
Cross-filtering and Cross-highlighting: When you click on a data point in one visual (like a bar in a bar chart), other visuals on the page are automatically filtered or highlighted based on your selection. This is a temporary filter created by interaction.
Drill-down Filters: When you use the drill-down functionality to move deeper into a data hierarchy (e.g., from Years to Quarters to Months), Power BI applies a temporary filter at each level.
Bookmark Filters: Report creators can use bookmarks to save a specific state of a report page, including its filters, slicers, and sort order. Activating a bookmark applies all of its saved filter settings.
Now that you know where filters can be applied, let's explore the methods for removing them.
Method 1: Clearing Selections from the Filters Pane
The Filters pane, typically located on the right side of the Power BI Desktop or Service interface, is the most common place to manage filters. Any active filter will be clearly visible here, showing the field being filtered and the specific selections applied. Clearing them is a simple process.
Let's say you have a sales report with a page-level filter applied for "Region: North" and a visual-level filter on a bar chart for "Product Category: Accessories".
How to Clear a Single Filter:
Locate the Filters pane. If it's not visible, go to the View tab in Power BI Desktop and make sure the "Filters" checkbox is ticked.
Find the filter card you want to clear. For example, find the one labeled "Product Category" under the "Filters on this visual" section.
Look for the small eraser icon to the right of the filter title. It will look like a pencil eraser and might have the tooltip "Clear filter".
Click the eraser icon. All selections within that filter card will be cleared, and the corresponding visual will update to show all data for that field again.
Using the eraser completely removes the selection, but the filter card itself (the field you can filter by) remains in the pane for future use. For example, if you cleared the "Accessories" selection, the "Product Category" filter field is still in the pane, ready for you to select "Clothing" or "Gadgets" next.
How to Completely Remove a Filter Field from the Pane:
Sometimes you don't just want to clear a selection, you want to remove the ability to filter by that field on that visual, page, or report entirely. This is an authoring action, typically done in Power BI Desktop.
In the Filters pane, find the filter card you wish to remove (e.g., the "Product Category" filter).
Instead of the eraser icon, click the 'X' icon in the top-right corner of that filter card.
The entire filter card will disappear from the pane, and the associated visual will immediately update.
Remember, this action removes the filter from the design of the report, whereas clearing a filter just resets the selection for the current viewing session.
Method 2: Resetting Slicers on the Report Canvas
Slicers are designed for easy, interactive filtering directly on the report canvas. They are one of the most common ways users interact with a report, so knowing how to reset them is a must.
The exact method depends on the type of slicer:
List or Checkbox Slicers: Simply uncheck the boxes you previously selected. To clear all selections at once, many report builders add a "Clear selections" option.
Dropdown Slicers: Open the dropdown menu and find an option like "Select All" to re-select everything, or simply change the selection to a different value. To clear it completely, use the "Clear selections" control if available.
Slider Slicers (for dates or numbers): Drag the slider handles back to the very beginning and end to include the full range.
The Best Way: The "Clear selections" Button
The most user-friendly way to clear a slicer is with the dedicated "Clear selections" control. It appears as an eraser icon within the header of the slicer.
If you're building a report and don't see this icon on your slicer, you can easily enable it:
Select the slicer visual on your report canvas.
In the Visualizations pane, click on the paintbrush icon to open the Format visual settings.
Expand the Slicer settings section and then navigate to Selection.
Toggle the Show "Select all" option to "On". This is often necessary for it to work effectively.
Now, back under Format visual, go to the Slicer header section. Inside the 'Elements' card turn the Clear selection icon on. The eraser icon will now appear on your slicer header, providing a one-click way to reset that slicer to its default state.
Method 3: Resetting Interactive Filters (Cross-Filtering)
Interactive filters are created when you select data points on visuals. For example, clicking the "USA" slice on a pie chart of sales by country will cause the other visuals on the page to filter down to show only USA data. Removing this type of temporary filter is very simple.
To remove a cross-filter, you can:
Click the same data point again to toggle the selection off.
Click on an empty area within the same visual's frame.
Ctrl + click the same data point, which also toggles selections.
This will revert the other visuals back to their original, unfiltered state immediately. Power BI's interactivity is powerful, but it's important to remember that these selections are filters, even if they don't appear in the main Filters pane.
Method 4: The Report-Wide "Reset to Default" Button
For report consumers in the Power BI Service, there's a powerful one-click solution to revert all your interactive changes and get back to the report's original published state.
At the top of the report view in the Power BI Service, you'll see a menu bar with several options. Look for the button labeled "Reset to default". Clicking this will:
Clear any selections you made in slicers.
Remove any cross-filtering or cross-highlighting you applied by clicking on visuals.
Undo any drilling down or drilling up you performed.
Revert any changes to sorting.
Essentially, it acts as a master reset for your viewing session, returning the report to the exact state the author published it in. It's a quick and foolproof way to explore data freely, knowing you can always get back to the starting point without affecting the underlying report for anyone else.
Important Note: The "Reset to default" button does not remove filters that the report author permanently set in the Filters pane (visual, page, or report-level). It only clears changes made by the viewer during their session.
Final Thoughts
Mastering filters in Power BI means knowing not only how to apply them to find insights but also how to quickly clear them to see the bigger picture. By using the Filters pane, resetting on-canvas slicers, and leveraging the "Reset to default" button, you can confidently navigate any report and ensure you're always analyzing the right data.
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