How to Use Bookmarks in Power BI

Transforming a static Power BI report into an interactive, app-like experience is easier than you think. The key is using bookmarks, one of the most powerful and flexible features in Power BI for creating customized views and guided stories with your data. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to create and use bookmarks to build more dynamic, user-friendly reports.

What Exactly Are Power BI Bookmarks?

Think of a Power BI bookmark as a saved state of a report page. It captures the exact configuration of a page at a specific moment in time so you can return to it instantly with a single click. When you create a bookmark, you’re saving things like:

• Applied filters and slicers
• The visible state of visuals (you can show or hide specific charts)
• The sort order of tables and matrices
• The drill-down location within a visual
• Objects you've selected on the page

This allows you to create curated views for your audience, build interactive navigation, or even present your findings like a PowerPoint slideshow, all within your Power BI report.

Getting Started: Activating the Bookmark Panes

Before you can start creating bookmarks, you need to make sure the right tools are visible in Power BI Desktop. Don't worry, it's just a couple of clicks.

1. Navigate to the View tab in the top ribbon.
2. In the "Show panes" section, check the boxes for both Bookmarks and Selection.

The Bookmarks pane is where you’ll add, manage, and view your bookmarks. The Selection pane is equally important - it lists all the objects on your report page (visuals, text boxes, shapes) and lets you control their visibility. Mastering the relationship between these two panes is the secret to building truly dynamic reports.

How to Create Your First Bookmark: A Step-by-Step Guide

Let's walk through a basic example. Imagine you have a sales dashboard and want to create a specific view that shows only performance in North America for the year 2023.

1. Set Up Your Report View: First, interact with your report page just as you want it to be saved. Use the slicers to filter for "North America" and the year "2023." Maybe you also want to sort a table by sales amount from highest to lowest. Get everything looking perfect.
2. Add a New Bookmark: Head over to the Bookmarks pane and click the Add button. Power BI will instantly capture the current state of a page and create a new item named "Bookmark 1."
3. Rename the Bookmark: This is a crucial step for staying organized. Double-click the default name and change it to something descriptive, like 2023 North America Sales. Avoid generic names at all costs, you'll thank yourself later when your report has dozens of bookmarks.
4. Check the Options: Hover over your new bookmark and click the three dots (...) that appear. You'll see several important options:

That's it! You've created your first bookmark. To test it, change your slicers to different values, then click the 2023 North America Sales bookmark. The page will immediately revert to your saved view.

Practical Use Case: Creating a Toggle to Switch Between Views

One of the most popular uses for bookmarks is to show and hide visuals, allowing users to toggle between different views of the data on the same page. Let's create a toggle that switches between a map chart and a table view of sales by state.

Step 1: Place Your Visuals

Start by adding both visuals to your report page. Drag and drop both the map visual and a table (or matrix) visual onto the canvas. You can even stack them on top of each other, as we’ll be controlling which one is visible at any given time.

Step 2: Create the "Map View" Bookmark

1. Go to the Selection Pane. You'll see a list of your visuals. Give them descriptive names by double-clicking them (e.g., "Sales Map" and "Sales Table").
2. Click the eye icon next to "Sales Table" to hide it. The table visual will disappear from the report canvas.
3. Go to the Bookmarks Pane, click Add, and rename the new bookmark to Map View.

Step 3: Create the "Table View" Bookmark

1. In the Selection Pane, now hide the "Sales Map" by clicking its eye icon.
2. Click the eye icon next to "Sales Table" to make it visible again.
3. Return to the Bookmarks Pane, click Add, and rename this second bookmark to Table View.

Now, test it out. Click "Map View" in the Bookmarks Pane, and only the map appears. Click "Table View," and the map is replaced by the table. You’ve successfully created an interactive toggle!

Making Bookmarks User-Friendly with Buttons

Great, you have functional bookmarks. But asking your users to open the Bookmarks pane to use them isn't very intuitive. The solution is to connect your bookmarks to buttons, shapes, or images.

Connect a Bookmark to a Button

1. Go to the Insert tab in the ribbon. Click Buttons and select Blank. A blank button will appear on your canvas.
2. With the new button selected, go to the Format pane on the right.
3. Under Button Style, expand the Text section, and enter "Show Map View" as the button text. Style it however you like.
4. Next, toggle the Action setting to "On."
5. Expand the Action section. For Type, select Bookmark from the dropdown menu.
6. For Bookmark, choose the Map View bookmark you created earlier. You can also add a tooltip for more context.

Repeat this process to create a second button for the Table View. Now, you have professional-looking buttons to control your view toggles. To test them in Power BI Desktop, you need to hold Ctrl + Click. Once published to the Power BI service, it becomes a simple single click.

Advanced Tip: The Bookmark Navigator

If you have a series of bookmarks you want a user to step through (e.g., Sales by Year 2021, 2022, 2023), adding a button for each one can look cluttered. Power BI has a cleaner solution for this: the Bookmark Navigator.

Step 1: Group Your Bookmarks

The navigator works best with bookmark groups. In the Bookmarks pane, select the bookmarks you want to include (hold Ctrl to select multiple), click the three dots (...) for one of them, and choose Group. Give your group a descriptive name, like "Annual Sales Views."

Step 2: Add the Bookmark Navigator

1. Go to the Insert tab > Buttons > Navigator > Bookmark navigator.
2. A new visual will appear on the canvas, with buttons already created for your bookmarks.
3. With the navigator selected, go to its Format pane. Under the Bookmarks section, you can select which group of bookmarks you want it to display. Choose your "Annual Sales Views" group.

The navigator automatically formats the buttons and even shows a "selected" state for the active bookmark, making it feel just like a slicer. It’s a clean and modern way to handle navigation for three or more bookmarks.

Telling a Story with Your Data's "View" Mode

Bookmarks aren't just for building interactive reports, they're also a fantastic presentation tool. After creating a series of bookmarks that highlight key insights in your data, you can present them as a guided story.

In the Bookmarks Pane, simply click the View button. This enters a presentation mode. You can now use the arrows at the bottom of the screen to cycle through each bookmark in order, just like a slideshow. This is perfect for walking stakeholders through your analysis in a controlled, narrative-driven way, ensuring they focus on the insights you want to share.

Best Practices for Flawless Bookmarking

Follow a few simple rules to keep your bookmarks organized and effective:

• Be Hyper-Descriptive with Names: "Bookmark 1" and "Bookmark 2" are useless. Name bookmarks based on the action they perform (e.g., "Toggle on Regional Filter") or the view they create ("Sales vs Target - Q3").
• Group Them Logically: Use groups in the Bookmarks pane to separate bookmarks that control filters from those that handle navigation or visual toggles on a certain page.
• Use Buttons for Everything: Always surface your bookmarks to the end-user via buttons, images, or navigators. Never assume they will know how to find the Bookmarks pane themselves.
• Double-check Selected vs All Visuals: Be intentional. If a bookmark is only meant to change one small component on your report, use the "Selected Visuals" option to avoid accidentally resetting other parts of your dashboard.

Final Thoughts

Power BI bookmarks are a deceptively simple feature with an enormous impact. They elevate your reports from static pages of charts to dynamic, custom applications that provide users with intuitive navigation and curated analytical paths. By mastering how bookmarks, buttons, and the Selection pane work together, you can create a much better experience for your audience.

Building intuitive dashboards that tell a clear story is the main goal of business intelligence. This often means learning how to configure complex features like bookmarks in software that has a steep learning curve. At Graphed, we're making this process effortless. We created Graphed to help anyone - regardless of technical skill - create stunning, real-time reports and get answers from their data just by asking questions in plain English. Instead of spending hours creating toggles and buttons, you can just tell our AI what you want to see, and it builds the interactive dashboard for you in seconds.