Power BI Blog: New Filters Pane

Welcome to this week’s Power BI blog series. This week, we’re going to look at Power BI Desktop’s new Filters pane.

You may have noticed the changes when you open the most up-to-date version of your Power BI Desktop: the new Filters pane is displayed on the right-hand side. Microsoft has updated the look and added a variety of new functionalities.

The new Filters pane is located right next to the Visualizations pane, which, similarly, can be hidden or shown by clicking on the arrow icon. Filters can be set up for the current page or all pages of the report.

I just simply need to drag the field based on which I wish to get my visual data sorted to the Filters pane:

Now if I hover over the visual area’s filter icon, I can see a read-only list of filters being applied to my current visual:

With the new Filters features, I can now lock my filters so that viewers of my report are able to see which filters are in place, but they are unable to modify them. To do this, I click on the lock icon on each filter box:

Additionally, I can hide my filters from viewers. Filters which are hidden will neither be displayed in the Filters pane nor in the Filter dialog for visuals:

Therefore, if I click the eye icon on the Course filter box, it can hide filters as required. This is particularly useful when I do not want users to see my last data cleaning as I exclude null / blanks or unwanted values out of my visual.

If I have more than one filter, I can sort it into my desired order:

Finally, the new Filters pane allows me to rename the filter. When I drag a field to the filter, the original field name stays. Here, I can change it to my reporting needs by double clicking on the name and type the new name in:

That’s it for this week, check back next week for more Power BI tips.

In the meantime, please remember we offer training in Power BI which you can find out more about >here. If you wish to catch up on past articles, you can find all our past Power BI blogs here.