Power BI technique · built-in features only
How to set up drillthrough to a detail page in Power BI
By Nawaf Sharaf · Founder & Reliability Engineer · Updated
When to use it. Use drillthrough when the overview should stay simple and detail (transactions, a customer profile) lives on its own page. Use a report page tooltip when a glance is enough.
Worked example
Worked example · Tallis Wholesale · right-click → Drill through → Customer detail
Overview page (filters: Region = West, FY2026)
Sales by customer
- Kestrel Outfitters$184K
right-click → Drill through
- Northgate Foods$163K
- Blue Fern Cafés$121K
- Orrin Hardware$99K
Customer detail page (hidden tab)
Drill Title
Customer: Kestrel Outfitters
← back button added by Power BI
Orders
| Order | Date | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| SO-40112 | 4 Aug 2026 | $38,200 |
| SO-40377 | 19 Aug 2026 | $41,650 |
| SO-40590 | 2 Sep 2026 | $29,900 |
| SO-40815 | 21 Sep 2026 | $44,300 |
| SO-41046 | 8 Oct 2026 | $30,250 |
| Total | $184,300 |
Tallis Wholesale is a fictional distributor. The overview page is filtered to the West region and FY2026 and shows sales by customer; Kestrel Outfitters is the largest at $184,300. Right-clicking that bar and choosing Drill through → Customer detail opens the detail page filtered to Kestrel Outfitters.
The detail page's card reads "Customer: Kestrel Outfitters" from the Drill Title measure, and its table lists the 5 orders behind the bar, totalling $184,300: the same number the reader clicked. That match is the check worth doing every time you build a drillthrough page. If the total differs, a filter did not travel (Keep all filters is off and the overview had page filters) or the detail page has a filter of its own.
Here Keep all filters is on, so Region = West and FY2026 come along with the customer. Turn it off and the table would show every Kestrel order in every region and year, with a total that no longer matches the bar.
Steps
- 1
Create the detail page
Add a page, design the detail visuals (a card for the selected value, a transactions table, a trend), and name the page clearly (Customer detail).
- 2
Add the drillthrough field
With nothing selected on the detail page, in the Visualizations pane → Build → Drill through, add the field (Customer[Customer Name]). Power BI adds a back button to the page.
- 3
Decide on Keep all filters
Keep all filters on carries every filter from the source visual (date, region) to the detail page; off passes only the drillthrough field.
- 4
Show what was drilled into
Add a card or title that names the selection, so readers know which customer the page shows.
Drill Title = "Customer: " & SELECTEDVALUE ( Customer[Customer Name], "select a customer" ) - 5
Offer a drillthrough button
Right-click is easy to miss. Insert a button with Action → Type: Drill through and Destination: the detail page; it becomes active when the reader selects a single data point.
How it works
The Drill through well tells Power BI which field the page accepts. Any visual on another page that uses that field (or a field that filters it through a relationship) offers the page in its right-click menu. When the reader drills, Power BI applies the clicked value as a filter on the target page, plus every other filter from the source visual's context when Keep all filters is on.
The back button Power BI adds is an ordinary button with the Back action, so it can be restyled or replaced. A drillthrough button does the same job as the right-click menu and becomes active once a single data point is selected, which makes the feature discoverable for readers who never right-click.
Because the target page only makes sense filtered, hide it from the page tabs; it still appears in drillthrough menus.
What Microsoft documents
Limits and behaviour from Microsoft Learn that change how you build this.
- Microsoft's steps put the field in the Drillthrough filters well in the Visualizations pane's Drillthrough section; Power BI then adds a back button on its own. The field has to be present in the source visual as well, or Drillthrough does not appear in its right-click menu.
- A drillthrough button is an ordinary button with Action set to Drillthrough and a target page. Microsoft suggests a tooltip on the button and conditional formatting to show or hide it depending on the filter context.
- Cross-report drillthrough works only in the Power BI service, between reports in the same workspace, with matching field names and data types, and it must be enabled in the target report's settings.
- After publishing, the order of pages in the Drill through menu can differ from the tab order you see in Desktop.
Variations
- Drill on several fields: add Customer and Product to the well to open a customer-and-product detail page from a matrix cell.
- Show the selected filters on the detail page with a measure that lists them, so a printed or exported page still says what it shows.
Check that it works
Drill from the largest bar and the smallest, then compare each detail total with the bar you clicked. Drill from a second visual that uses the same field through a relationship, and from a matrix cell, to be sure every entry point works. Finally, publish and repeat once in the browser, where the menu order can change.
Common mistakes
- The source visual must use the same field (or one related to it) for drillthrough to appear.
- Hide the detail page (right-click the tab → Hide page) so readers only reach it filtered.
- Cross-report drillthrough needs the option turned on in both reports and the same field names.
- Set the drillthrough well to Used as category or Summarized as you need; a summarized field changes which source visuals offer the page.
FAQ
Can I drill through on a measure?
No. Drillthrough filters on fields (columns). Measures on the source visual can be carried to the page with Keep all filters.
Can the detail page be in another report?
Yes, with cross-report drillthrough, turned on in the report settings of both reports in the same workspace or app.
Sources
Menu names follow Power BI Desktop as documented on Microsoft Learn; they can move between releases. The companies and figures in the worked example are invented.
Related
Assets and guides that go with this technique.