How to Search in Power BI
Drilling down into your data to find specific answers is the whole point of business intelligence, and a powerful search function is your best tool for the job. Instead of scrolling through endless tables and charts, a well-placed search box can help you and your team find invaluable insights in seconds. This tutorial will walk you through several effective methods for adding search capabilities to your Power BI reports, from the simple built-in slicer to a more advanced DAX-powered universal search box.
Why Should You Add Search to Your Power BI Reports?
Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Adding a search function isn't just about adding another widget to your dashboard, it's about fundamentally improving the user experience and the value of your report.
Improves User Experience: Large datasets can be intimidating. A search bar provides a familiar, intuitive starting point for users to begin their own data exploration, making your reports more accessible and less overwhelming.
Speeds Up Time-to-Insight: The faster users can find the data they're looking for, the faster they can glean insights from it. Instead of a five-minute hunt through a massive table for a specific customer, they can get their answer in five seconds.
Empowers End-Users: A good search function turns a static report into an interactive tool. It empowers team members who aren't Power BI experts to ask their own questions of the data, reducing dependency on a dedicated analyst to make constant tweaks or create dozens of report variations.
Method 1: Using the Slicer Visual as a Search Bar
The simplest and most common way to add search functionality to a Power BI report is by using the built-in Slicer visual. This is perfect for when users need to search within a single, specific field like a product name, customer, or geographical region.
How to Set Up a Searchable Slicer
Follow these steps to turn a standard slicer into one with a search box:
Open your report in Power BI Desktop. In the Visualizations pane on the right, click the Slicer icon to add it to your report canvas.
With the new slicer visual selected, drag the data field you want to search (for example, 'Product Name') into the Field well in the Visualizations pane.
By default, you'll see a list of all product names. To add the search function, hover over the slicer visual and click the ellipsis in the top-right corner.
From the menu that appears, select Search. A search box will now appear at the top of your list, allowing users to quickly filter the items.
Now, when a user types into this search box, the list below it will dynamically filter, showing only the items that contain the search term. Selecting an item from the filtered list will then filter the other visuals on your report page.
Pro Tips for Slicers
Use Dropdowns for Long Lists: If your list has hundreds or thousands of items, it can take up too much space. To save real estate, select the slicer, go to the Format visual tab (the paintbrush icon), expand Slicer settings > Style, and change the style from 'Vertical list' to 'Dropdown'. The search functionality works perfectly inside a dropdown menu.
Control Selection: Under Slicer settings > Selection, you can disable the 'Show "Select all" option' or turn on 'Single select' if you want users to only be able to analyze one item at a time.
Method 2: Leveraging the Filters Pane
The Filters pane is a native part of the Power BI interface, usually docked on the far right. While slicers are for on-canvas, always-visible filtering, the Filters pane offers a more powerful and less intrusive way for users to search and filter data.
How to Use the Filters Pane for Searching
You can pre-define filters for your users or allow them to use the pane for their own ad-hoc analysis. Here's the basic workflow:
Identify the data field you want to make searchable, such as 'Customer Name'.
Drag the 'Customer Name' field into one of the wells in the Filters pane.
Filters on this visual: This filter will only affect the currently selected visual.
Filters on this page: The filter will apply to all visuals on the current report page.
Filters on all pages: The filter will apply globally across every page in the report.
Once you've dropped the field into the well, a filter "card" will appear. Expand it.
You have different filtering types. The default, 'Basic filtering', presents a list of all values with a search bar - just like the slicer visual. However, you can switch to 'Advanced filtering' to use more complex logic like 'contains', 'does not start with', or 'is not blank'.
Filters Pane vs. Slicers: Which to Choose?
Choose a slicer for primary filters that users will interact with frequently. They are intuitive and easily accessible right on the report canvas.
Choose the Filters pane for more complex, secondary, or ad-hoc filtering needs. It keeps the report canvas clean and gives "power users" more fine-tuned control without cluttering the main view for everyone else.
Method 3: Importing the "Text Filter" Custom Visual
Sometimes, what you really want is a simple, clean search box that looks and feels like a search bar on a website - without a long list of items below it. For this, you can turn to Power BI's marketplace, AppSource, for a custom visual.
The "Text Filter" by Microsoft is a fantastic, free solution for this.
How to Add and Use the Text Filter
In the Visualizations pane, click the ellipsis (...) and choose Get more visuals.
This will open the AppSource marketplace. In the search bar at the top, type "Text Filter" and press Enter.
Find the "Text Filter" visual (it's often the first result) and click Add.
Back in your report, you'll see a new icon in your Visualizations pane for the Text Filter. Click it to add it to your report canvas.
Drag the desired field you want to search (e.g., 'Order ID' or 'Region') into the Category well of the visual.
That's it! You now have a simple, dedicated text box. Users can type in what they're looking for, hit Enter, and watch the entire report page filter down to match their query. It’s an incredibly intuitive way to add a focused search experience.
Method 4: Building a Universal Search Box with DAX
What if you want a single search box that can search across multiple fields simultaneously? For instance, you want users to be able to type in a search term, and have Power BI check if that term appears in the Customer Name, the Company Name, or the Customer Email.
For this level of flexibility, we need to turn to DAX (Data Analysis Expressions).
Step-by-Step Guide to Building a DAX Search Measure:
Step 1: Create a Disconnected Table for User Input
First, we need a place to store whatever the user types into our search box, without affecting our data model. We'll create a single-column, single-row table just for this.
Go to the Modeling tab in Power BI Desktop and click New Table.
Enter the following DAX formula:
Step 2: Add a Slicer for the Search Input
Now, add a Slicer visual to your report canvas. Drag the 'SearchTerm' column from the new SearchInput table you just created into the slicer’s Field well. Enable the "Search" feature in this slicer's options (... menu) to get a true text input box. This slicer is now your search box.
Step 3: Write the Core DAX Search Measure
This is where the magic happens. We'll create a measure that checks if the value typed into our slicer exists in any of the columns we want to search. Right-click on your main data table (e.g., 'Customers') and select New measure. Enter this DAX formula:
This formula grabs the text from our SearchInput slicer. Then, for every row in the 'Customers' table, it checks if that text is contained within the name, company, or email fields. If it finds a match, it returns 1, otherwise, it returns 0.
Step 4: Apply the Measure as a Filter
Finally, select the main visual you want to filter (e.g., the customer table or a chart of customer sales). Drag the IsMatch measure you just created into the 'Filters on this visual' well in the Filters pane. Expand the card, set the condition to is 1, and click Apply filter.
Now you have a powerful, universal search box. Anytime a user types in that slicer, the measure re-calculates for every row and your customer table will instantly filter to show only rows where the text was found in any of the three columns.
Final Thoughts
Implementing search in Power BI isn't a one-size-fits-all task. You have a range of tools at your disposal, from simple drag-and-drop searches with Slicers and the Filters pane, to clean user interfaces with custom visuals, and finally to truly powerful, multi-field search solutions powered by DAX. The key is to think about what your users need to find and choose the method that makes that process as easy as possible.
Making data more accessible is at the heart of modern analytics. While PBI offers robust tools for report creators, the initial hurdle often lies in connecting scattered data sources and knowing what to build in the first place. At my company, we've focused on solving this initial headache for marketing and sales data. With Graphed you simply connect platforms like Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Shopify, or Salesforce, and then ask for what you need in plain English. There’s no need to build slicers or write measures - just ask, "Show me my top-performing ad campaigns by revenue last month," and the dashboard is created for you in seconds.