How to Set Up Drill Through to Another Page in Power BI

By Ravindra Bagale · Last updated: 16 October 2026

Practice files: blinkit-sales-2025-small.csv (12 orders on this page) and blinkit-sales-2025.csv (360 orders). Start from the report of How to Create a Custom Hierarchy and Drill Down by Category in Power BI, or build a new category chart.

Made-up data: fictional Blinkit-style orders from Maharashtra cities, for practice only. Amounts are in ₹.

1. The problem

The overview page shows revenue by category: Dairy & Bakery 1,600 · Snacks & Branded Foods 880 · Sweets 840 · Staples 530.

For each category the team wants a small details page: total revenue, revenue by sub-category, and revenue by city. Building four copies of that page, one per category, would be slow and would break the day a fifth category appears. You want one details page that shows whichever category was clicked.

2. The idea in simple words

• Drill down opens the next level inside the same chart (category › sub_category).
• Drill through jumps to another page and filters it to the item you right-clicked. Think of a map: right-click India and a page opens with India's states (Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat…).

To make it work, the details page needs to know which field carries the filter. You put that field (here category) in the details page's Drillthrough well. The well belongs to the page, not to any visual, so you set it with the empty canvas selected.

3. The data

What the details page should show for each category (12 orders, blinkit-sales-2025-small.csv):

4. Step by step

The overview page

1. On the page with the chart (call it Overview), make sure a clustered column chart shows category (or the category hierarchy) on the X-axis and revenue on the Y-axis.

The details page

2. Click + at the bottom to add a page. Rename it Category details.
3. Click an empty part of the canvas so that no visual is selected.
4. In the Visualizations pane, scroll to the bottom to the Drillthrough section. Drag category from the Data pane into Add drillthrough fields here. Use the plain category field, not the category Hierarchy. In the newer Format pane you may find the same setting as Format page › Page information › Page type: Drillthrough, then Drill through from › Add data › category.
5. Power BI adds a Back button (a left arrow) at the top left of the page.
6. Add a Card with revenue, a Clustered column chart with sub_category × revenue, and a Clustered bar chart with city × revenue. Add a text box or card with category so the page shows which category it is for.

Use it

7. Go back to Overview. Right-click the Snacks & Branded Foods bar › Drill through › Category details.
8. The details page opens, filtered to Snacks & Branded Foods: card 880, Biscuits & Cookies 460 and Namkeen 420.
9. To return, Ctrl+click the Back button (in Power BI Desktop a plain click selects the button for editing; in the Power BI Service a normal click works).
10. Right-click Dairy & Bakery › Drill through › Category details: card 1,600, Ghee & Butter 1,300 and Curd & Shrikhand 300.

5. Your result should look like this

In the Filters pane of the details page you can see the drill-through filter, for example category is Snacks & Branded Foods. If you open the details page directly from its tab, it shows all categories (₹3,850), because nothing has been passed to it.

6. What happened

• Putting category in the Drillthrough well told Power BI: this page can receive a category.
• Every visual on any other page that uses category now offers Drill through › Category details on right-click.
• Clicking it carried the clicked value over as a page filter, so all three visuals on the details page showed only that category.
• The Back button returned you to the page you came from.

7. Explore further

• Keep all filters. On by default: filters from the source (slicers, page filters, the clicked bar) are carried to the details page. With a page filter city = Pune on the overview, drilling through on Snacks gives 290, not 880. Turn it off if you want only the drill-through field to pass.
• Cross-report. Turn on Cross-report in the Drillthrough section to drill through from other reports in the same workspace in the Power BI Service.
• Several fields. Add both category and city to the well to open details for "Snacks in Pune". The source visual then needs both fields.
• Drill-through button. Insert › Buttons › Blank, Action type Drill through, Destination Category details. Users select a bar, then click the button: easier to discover than right-click.
• Hide the details page (right-click the tab › Hide page) if it makes no sense on its own; drill through still works.

8. Common mistakes

9. Practise on your own

10. Think like a professional

• Business view. Overview pages answer "where"; drill-through pages answer "why". Keeping them apart keeps both readable.
• One details page, any item. A single drill-through page scales to new categories without changes.
• Design for discovery. Add a subtitle on the overview ("Right-click a bar for details") or a drill-through button.
• Watch carried filters. Keep all filters is usually what users expect, but label the page so they know which filters came along.

Interview questions

1. What is drill through? Navigation from a visual to another page that is filtered to the selected item.
2. How do you set it up? On the target page, with no visual selected, add the field to the Drillthrough well (or Page type Drillthrough › Drill through from).
3. Drill down vs drill through? Drill down shows the next level in the same visual; drill through opens another page.
4. What does Keep all filters do? Passes all filters from the source page, not just the drill-through field.

Recap

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