Guides

Drill-through Pages in Power BI

By Ravindra Bagale, Power BI & Data Analytics trainer · LinkedIn · Published: 30 September 2026 · Last updated: 30 September 2026

Drill through opens another page filtered to the item you right-clicked. Drill down stays inside one visual. The target page needs the same field, a Back button, and a decision about which other filters come along.

Real example: from the city bar to one shop's slips

Summary page: a bar of sales, Mumbai 1000 and Pune 160, plus a month slicer sitting on March.

The owner right-clicks Mumbai. Drill through should open a detail page for that shop, not a closer look inside the same bar.

What the detail page shows, with only Mumbai rows in:

1. Cards: sales 1000, orders 2, phone bill 699.
2. A small table of the slips: rice 500, oil 200, atta 300.
3. The Pune sugar slip must not be on this page.

Why this is not drill down: drill down would stay on the summary visual and split Mumbai into products. Drill through leaves the page. The slips and the bill need room.

Why Keep all filters: March is selected on the summary. If Keep all filters is on, the detail page stays in March, so you do not mix in January's 800. If it is off, you get every month for Mumbai. Pick the one the owner asked for, then read the filter card.

Back returns to the bar. In Desktop, hold Ctrl while you click Back. Hide the detail page so nobody opens it from the tab and sees both shops by accident.

What do I need before this guide?

• A summary visual: choose a chart or a matrix.
• Report page tooltips only so you do not confuse hover with navigation.
• Course: What drill through is.

Before and after (look at the tables first)

Down versus through

1. Drill down walks a hierarchy inside the same visual: year to month to day. The page does not change.
2. Drill through leaves the page. The reader lands on a page built for one store, one city, or one product.
3. Use through when the detail would clutter the summary: a list of orders, a partner breakdown, three cards.
4. Say the words precisely in a review. “Drill” alone is how teams build the wrong click.

Build the target

1. New page, rename it Store Details.
2. Click the canvas background. The Build pane shows Drill through only when no visual is selected.
3. Drag the store field — the same column as the summary chart’s axis — into Add drill-through fields here.
4. Power BI places a Back button. If you deleted it: Insert → Buttons → Back.
5. Add cards (orders, AOV) and one bar or table that makes sense for a single store.
6. Optional title measure later. First confirm the filter works.
7. On the summary page, right-click a bar → Drill through → Store Details.
8. The Filters pane on the target should show a drill-through filter for that store.

Filters that travel

1. Keep all filters On: the month slicer and other source filters come too. Use this when “this store in the selected month” is the sentence.
2. Off: the page mainly receives the drill-through field. Use this when the detail page should ignore the summary slicers.
3. If the target is blank, you may have a filter on the detail page that fights the one you just passed. Read the Filters pane before you rewrite measures.
4. Used as category is the usual setting: drill appears when the field is on an axis or in rows.

Back, hide, and the Desktop click

1. In Power BI Desktop, buttons often need Ctrl+click. In the Service, a normal click works. Test both stories if you can.
2. Hide the detail page when readers should not open an unfiltered tab and see every store at once.
3. Put Back in the same corner on every detail page so the path is a habit.
4. A drill-through button (Action type Drill through) is easier to discover than right-click, but right-click is the lesson to learn first.

Ghabru naka — greyed-out Drill through almost always means the columns are not the same field.

Mistakes and calm fixes