Power BI Drillthrough Explainer & Picker
Drillthrough, bookmarks, and tooltip pages all add interactivity — but they're not interchangeable. Pick what you actually want below and get the right feature, plus how to set it up.
Use Drillthrough
What drillthrough actually is
Drillthrough sends a user from a summary visual straight to a dedicated detail page, automatically filtered to the exact point they clicked — click a region's bar on a sales chart, land on a page already filtered to just that region. By default drillthrough keeps every filter from the source page active on the detail page too (not just the one field you drilled on); uncheck "Keep all filters" on the drillthrough field well if you only want the specific field filtered. A back button is added to the detail page automatically so users can return to where they started.
Cross-report drillthrough
Drillthrough also works across two separate published reports (cross-report drillthrough), as long as both are in the same workspace and the destination report's drillthrough page is set to allow it. Useful for sending users from a high-level summary report into a more detailed operational report without merging the two into one file.
Bookmarks vs. tooltip pages, briefly
A bookmark captures a snapshot of a page's current state (which visuals are visible, current filters, current selections) and a button can jump back to it — the standard way to build a toggle, like switching a chart between "by month" and "by quarter" without leaving the page. A tooltip page is a small, specially-marked report page shown automatically on hover over a data point — no click, no page navigation, just a richer tooltip than Power BI's default one.
Questions
Is this free?
Yes, completely free, no account or signup needed.
Can I use drillthrough and bookmarks together?
Yes — they solve different problems and commonly appear in the same report. A bookmark can even jump to a drillthrough page pre-filtered to a specific value, combining both.
Why does my drillthrough page show more filtered than I expected?
"Keep all filters" is on by default, so every active filter on the source page (not just the field you drilled through on) carries over. Turn it off on the drillthrough field well in the Visualizations pane if you only want the one field filtered.
Does a tooltip page need to be a special visual type?
No — it's a normal report page with its size set to "Tooltip" in the page formatting pane, which marks it as available for other visuals to use as a custom tooltip.
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