What is a Bookmark in Power BI?

Power BI bookmarks are one of those features that can completely change how you build and interact with reports, turning static pages into guided, interactive stories. They allow you to capture a specific "state" of a report page - including all your filters, slicers, and visual arrangements - and return to it with a single click. This article will walk you through what bookmarks are, why they're so powerful, and how you can use them to create more intuitive and insightful reports.

What Exactly Is a Power BI Bookmark?

Think of a bookmark in Power BI as capturing a snapshot of a report page's configuration at a specific moment. It doesn't just save a picture, it saves the interactive state. When a user clicks a bookmark, Power BI instantly applies all the saved settings, effectively turning the clock back to that exact view you configured.

A single bookmark can capture and save a combination of the following properties:

Filters and Slicers: The current selection in your slicers and any filters applied in the Filters pane.
Sort Order: The way your data is sorted within a table or chart (e.g., sorting sales from highest to lowest).
Object Visibility: Whether a specific chart, text box, or image is visible or hidden (controlled via the Selection Pane).
Focus or Spotlight Mode: If you've used the spotlight feature to highlight a specific data series in a chart, or used focus mode to expand a visual, the bookmark can save that view.
Drill-through Location: The drill state of your visuals. If you've drilled down into a specific category, a bookmark can preserve that view.

Essentially, bookmarks let you pre-configure different views of your data so that you or your report viewers can easily navigate between them without having to manually adjust a dozen slicers and filters each time.

Why Are Bookmarks So Useful?

Bookmarks do more than just save a filter state, they unlock new ways to present information and improve the user experience of your reports. Here are some of the most common and powerful ways to use them.

1. Create Guided Data Stories

Bookmarks are the foundation of data storytelling in Power BI. Instead of showing stakeholders a single, dense dashboard, you can create a series of bookmarks that walk them through insights in a logical sequence. Each bookmark acts like a "slide" in a presentation.

For example, you could create a "story" following these steps:

Bookmark 1: "Overall Sales Performance" - The default view showing total revenue and orders.
Bookmark 2: "Deep Dive: European Market" - A view filtered to show only sales data from your European region.
Bookmark 3: "Top Product in Europe" - A view that spotlights the top-performing product within the European market.

By attaching these bookmarks to "Next" and "Previous" buttons, you create a controlled, guided tour that makes complex data much easier to digest.

2. Build Custom, App-Like Navigation

Tired of the standard page tabs at the bottom of a Power BI report? Bookmarks let you build a completely custom navigation menu using buttons, shapes, or images. You can design an intuitive header or a side-panel menu that feels less like a report and more like a purpose-built web application.

For instance, you could create buttons like "Sales Overview," "Marketing Performance," and "Inventory Levels." Each button would link to a bookmark that takes the user to a pre-defined view, making the entire report more professional and user-friendly.

3. Toggle Between Different Visuals

Sometimes you want to see the same data in two different ways - say, as a bar chart and as a detailed table. With bookmarks and the Selection Pane, you can create a toggle effect.

The process is simple: place the bar chart and the table on top of each other. Then, create two bookmarks:

Bookmark A: "Show Chart View" - In this bookmark, the table is hidden, and the chart is visible.
Bookmark B: "Show Table View" - In this one, the chart is hidden, and the table is visible.

Link these two bookmarks to separate buttons (or even better, a single toggle-style button) and voilà - users can switch between the two views instantly without cluttering the report page.

4. Add a "Reset Filters" Button

One of the most practical and appreciated uses for a bookmark is a simple "Reset" button. After a user has clicked through various filters and slicers, their report view can become very specific. To get back to the default overview, they would have to manually clear every filter.

A "Reset Filters" button streamlines this. You simply create a bookmark of your report page in its default, unfiltered state. Then, you link a button to that bookmark. Now, with one click, users can clear all filters and return to the original report view.

How to Create and Use Bookmarks: A Step-by-Step Guide

Getting started with bookmarks is straightforward. Let's walk through the process.

Step 1: Open the Bookmarks and Selection Panes

First, you need to make the right tools visible. Go to the View tab in the Power BI Desktop ribbon and check the boxes next to Bookmarks and Selection. Two new panes will appear on the right side of your screen. The Selection pane is crucial because it allows you to show and hide report objects, which bookmarks can then save.

Step 2: Configure Your Report View

Get your report page looking exactly as you want it for your first bookmark. Set any filters you need, adjust your slicers, sort tables or charts, and use the Selection Pane to hide any objects you don't want to be visible for this specific captured state.

Step 3: Add Your Bookmark

With your report page set up, click the Add button in the Bookmarks pane. Power BI will instantly create a new bookmark, likely named "Bookmark 1." It's highly recommended to immediately rename your bookmarks to be descriptive (e.g., "Q1 2023 Sales - North America"). Simply double-click the name to change it.

Important Note: If you adjust your report page after creating a bookmark and want to save the new version to that same bookmark, you must click the ellipsis (...) next to the bookmark's name and select Update. Forgetting to update is a common mistake!

Step 4: Understand the Bookmark Options

Clicking the ellipsis (...) next to a bookmark reveals powerful settings that control its behavior:

Data: This is on by default and ensures your bookmark saves all filters, slicers, and sort orders. If you untick this, the bookmark will only affect visual properties, like which objects are visible.
Display: This saves the visibility and focus/spotlight states of your visuals.
Current Page: With this ticked, activating the bookmark will only affect the visuals on the current page. If you untick it, clicking the bookmark will always navigate you back to the page on which it was originally created.
All visuals vs. Selected visuals: This allows you to create bookmarks that only impact specific visuals on the page. Just select the visuals you want the bookmark to affect before clicking "Update" and choosing "Selected visuals."

Step 5: Link an Action to Your Bookmark

A bookmark isn't very useful until users have a way to activate it. The most common way to do this is with buttons, shapes, or images.

Go to the Insert tab, select Buttons, and pick one (e.g., a blank button).
Position the button on your report page.
Select the button, and in the Format pane, toggle the Action setting to "On."
In the Action settings, set the Type to "Bookmark" and select the bookmark you created from the Bookmark dropdown.
It's good practice to also set the Tooltip text. For example, "Click to view sales data for North America." This helps users understand what the button does when they hover over it.

Now, when a user Ctrl+Clicks the button in Power BI Desktop (or just clicks it in the published Power BI service), it will instantly apply the saved bookmark state.

Best Practices for Using Bookmarks

To keep your reports clean and manageable, follow these simple tips:

Be Descriptive with Naming: When your report has 20 bookmarks named "Bookmark 1" through "Bookmark 20" and 50 objects named "Shape," you will have a maintenance nightmare. Take the time to rename everything clearly (e.g., "Total Revenue Visual," "Btn Show Table View," etc.).
Use Groups to Organize: In the Bookmarks pane, you can group bookmarks into folders. This is great for organizing different data stories or user navigation paths, especially when using the "Bookmark Navigator" visual.
Use the "Bookmark Navigator": For simple navigation cases, go to Insert > Buttons > Navigator > Bookmark navigator. This visual automatically creates a linked set of buttons for a group of your bookmarks, saving you the manual process of creating and linking them individually.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, Power BI bookmarks bridge the gap between a static report and a truly intuitive, guided analytics experience. By capturing report states, they let you tell compelling data stories, create tailored user journeys, and make your dashboards far easier for non-technical users to navigate. Once you start using them, you'll wonder how you ever built reports without them.

While mastering features like bookmarks in Power BI is a great way to elevate your reports, we know the initial process of connecting data and building visualizations can still be a major time sink. We created Graphed because we believe getting insights shouldn't require you to be a dashboard designer. With Graphed, you connect your data sources once and then simply ask for what you need in plain English - like "create a dashboard showing website traffic last quarter" or "which marketing channels have the best ROI?" - and it's built for you in seconds. It allows you to skip straight to the insights.