How to Use Icons as Buttons in Power BI

Tired of cluttered Power BI reports filled with clunky, rectangular buttons? You can instantly make your dashboards look cleaner and more professional by swapping them out for sleek, intuitive icons. This article will walk you through exactly how to turn simple icons into powerful, interactive buttons for navigation, filtering, and more.

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Why Use Icons as Buttons?

While Power BI's default buttons work just fine, they can take up a lot of valuable space and make your design feel dated. Using icons as functional buttons offers several advantages that can significantly improve your reports.

• Saves Space: Icons are compact. Replacing text-filled buttons like "Go to Sales Summary" with a simple dollar sign or chart icon frees up space for more important visuals. This is especially critical for reports that need to be viewed on smaller screens.
• More Intuitive Navigation: We're all conditioned to understand what common icons mean. A house icon for "Home," a question mark for "Help," or a magnifying glass for "Search" are universally recognized. This makes your dashboard easier for new users to navigate without having to read a bunch of labels.
• Professional, Custom Look: Custom icons allow you to match your report's design to your company's branding. It's a small detail that elevates your work from a standard report to a polished, professional dashboard that feels custom-built and user-friendly.

Finding and Preparing Your Icons

Before you start adding icons to your report, you need a source. Consistency is key here, using icons from the same "family" or style will make your dashboard look cohesive and tidy. Avoid mixing and matching dramatically different styles if you can.

Three Great Sources for Icons:

1. Power BI's Built-in Shapes and Icons: Don't overlook what's already available. You can add simple geometric shapes (like circles or squares) or a selection of pre-loaded icons by going to the Insert tab on the Ribbon, then selecting Shapes or Buttons > (icon type).
2. PowerPoint: This is a surprisingly powerful option! PowerPoint has a massive, high-quality icon library. Go to Insert > Icons in PowerPoint, find what you need, right-click on the icon you want, and choose Save as Picture. Make sure to save it in SVG format for the best quality.
3. Online Icon Libraries: Websites like Flaticon or The Noun Project are fantastic resources for millions of free and premium icons. You can find an icon for virtually anything you can imagine.

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Best Practices for Icon Files:

Whenever possible, use icons in .SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) format. Unlike .JPG or .PNG files, SVGs are vector-based, which means you can resize them as much as you want without losing any quality - they will always stay perfectly sharp. Most online libraries give you the option to download icons as SVGs.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Turning an Icon into a Button

Once you have your icon picked out, turning it into a functional button is a straightforward process. Let’s walk through setting up a simple page navigation button.

Step 1: Insert Your Icon into the Report

First, get your chosen icon onto your report's canvas. There are two main ways to do this:

• For Image Files (.SVG, .PNG, .JPG): On the top ribbon, go to the Insert tab and click on Image. Select the icon file you saved on your computer. It will now appear on your report canvas, ready for you to resize and move.
• For Built-in Shapes: Go to the Insert tab, click on Shapes, and choose whichever fits your needs. Many people use a simple left-arrow shape as a "Back" button.

Step 2: Enable the 'Action' Setting

This is where you give your static image button-like powers.

1. Click on the icon or shape you just added to select it.
2. With the object selected, look to the right-hand side of your Power BI window for the Format pane.
3. In the Format pane, you'll see a setting called Action. It's usually turned off by default. Click the toggle to switch it to On.

Once you turn it on, a new set of options will appear underneath the toggle. This is where you tell Power BI what to do when a user clicks the icon.

Step 3: Configure the Button's Action

Under the 'Action' settings, you’ll find a ‘Type’ dropdown menu. This lets you choose from several different actions:

• Back: Takes the user to the previous page they were on. This is perfect for a "back" arrow icon.
• Page Navigation: Lets you send the user to a specific page in your report. This is the most common use case for building report navigation menus.
• Bookmark: This is a more advanced option. A bookmark in Power BI captures a specific state of a report page - including filters, slicers, and visibility of objects. You can use an icon to trigger a bookmark, allowing users to toggle between different views on the same page (e.g., switching from a bar chart to a table).
• Drill through: Allows users to navigate to a different, more detailed page while carrying over filters from their original selection.
• Web URL: Lets you open a webpage. Useful for linking to documentation, help guides, or company websites.

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Example Setup: Page Navigation

Let's finish our simple example of navigating to another page.

1. In the 'Action' pane, set the Type to 'Page navigation'.
2. A new dropdown menu called Destination will appear. Click on it and select the report page you want the user to go to when they click the icon (e.g., 'Sales Details').
3. Finally, you can add a Tooltip. This is the text that appears when a user hovers over the icon. It’s good practice to add something descriptive here, like "Click to view the Sales Details page."

That's it! In the Power BI Desktop, you'll need to hold down the Ctrl key and click the icon to test it out. Once published to the Power BI service online, it will work with a simple click.

Elevating Your Icon Buttons with Style and Interaction

You've already created a functional button, but a few extra steps can make the user experience even better.

Using Hover and Press Effects

A great button provides visual feedback to let the user know it's clickable. Power BI allows you to change the icon's appearance when a user hovers over it or clicks it.

1. Select your icon (if it's an image, you'll want to go to Style under the format pane, if it is a built-in button, select the Icon option).
2. You'll see a dropdown for Apply settings to (or 'State') which defaults to Default. You can change this to On hover or On Press.
3. For the On hover state, you could change the icon's color, add transparency, or apply an outer glow to make it stand out. This small visual cue is incredibly effective.

Leveraging Bookmarks for Showing/Hiding Visuals

This is a more advanced but powerful technique. Imagine you have a busy report page and you want to offer users a way to see a data table without it cluttering up the main view.

1. First, add your data table to the page and position it where you want it. Turn off its visibility by default in the Selection pane.
2. Create a bookmark with the table invisible (let's call it "Hide Table").
3. Next, make the table visible and create a second bookmark (call it "Show Table").
4. Now, insert two icons - maybe an "eye" icon and a "closed eye" icon. Assign the "Show Table" bookmark to the 'eye' icon's action, and the "Hide Table" bookmark to the 'closed eye' icon's action.

The result? Users can now toggle the data table on and off with a single click, keeping your dashboard clean and interactive.

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Use a 'Reset Filters' Icon

One of the most useful icons you can add to a report with many slicers is a "Reset." Users can get lost after applying multiple filters, and a single-click button to clear all selections is a huge quality-of-life improvement.

1. Set all your report slicers to their default, unfiltered state.
2. Create a new Bookmark and name it "Reset Filters." IMPORTANT: In the bookmark's settings (click the three dots next to its name), make sure you untick "Data" and ensure only "Display" and "Current Page" are checked if you don't want it to affect visual states. For filters, however, you need "Data" selected. This can be tricky, so make sure you properly set what you actually want the bookmark to do.
3. Insert a "refresh" or "undo" icon.
4. Set the icon’s Action type to 'Bookmark' and select your "Reset Filters" bookmark.

Now, whenever your user gets lost, they can simply click this icon to get back to the report's original view.

Final Thoughts

Replacing default buttons with icons is a simple but incredibly effective way to enhance the design, usability, and professionalism of your Power BI reports. By following these steps and incorporating interactive elements like hover states and bookmark actions, you can create a user experience that is both intuitive and visually appealing for your audience.

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