Power BI Slicer is commonly used to add filters to the canvas or to display filters on the report canvas. Let me show you how to Create a Slicer in Power BI with an example.
For this Power BI Slicer demonstration, we are going to use the SQL Data Source that we created in our previous article.
How to Create a Power BI Slicer
We are going to use this page to demonstrate the steps involved in creating a Power BI Slicer. This page contains Stacked Bar Chart, Clustered Column Chart, and Pie Chart. So, Please refer to Connect to SQL Server article to understand the Power BI Data Source.
To create a Slicer in Power BI, first Drag and Drop the fields that you want to use as a filter to the Canvas region. In this example, we want to use Country as the Filter for this report. So, let me drag the Country from the Geography table to the Canvas. It will automatically create a Map for you.
Click on the Slicer under the Visualization section and it will convert a Map. From the screenshot below, you can see the list of countries.
Create a Slicer Approach 2
First, click on the shown icon under the Visualization section. It automatically creates a Power BI slicer with dummy data, as shown below.
In order to add data to it, please drag and drop the filter field to the Fields section. Let me add Country to the Fields section.
For the demo purpose, let me select the United States. From the screenshot below, you can see that the Stacked Column chart, Pie Chart, and Clustered Column charts are displaying the Sales for the united states.
TIP: By default, you can only select One field (Country) at a time. For multiple select, you have to toggle Single Select option from On to Off in the format section.
This time we selected the United Kingdom. As you can observe that the filter applied on all charts.
How to Format Power BI Slicer
Please click on the Format button to see the list of formatting options that are available for this Power BI Slicer.
Format General Settings
Use this General Section to Change the Outline Weight, Outline Color, X, Y position, Width, and height.
Format Header of a Slicer in Power BI
Here, we added Background Color, Outline to bottom. Next, we changed the text size to 20, and Font family to Georgia.
Format Items
We changed the Items (Countries) font color to Green, text size to 20, and Font family to Georgia.
Format Slicer Title
By toggling the Title option from Off to On, you can add a title to it. From the screenshot below, you can see we added the Title Text as Countries Slicer in Power BI. Next, change the Font Color to Red, Title Alignment to center, Font Family to Georgia, and Text Size to 19.
Format Power BI Slicer Background Color and Borders
You can add the Background color to this by toggling Background option to On. For the demonstration purpose, we added a random color with 66% transparency. Similarly, you can add Borders also by toggling the Border option from Off to On.
Format Slicer Selection Control
The selection controls section helps you to format the Power BI slicer selection control. This section has two properties:
- Show Select All: It adds Select All option to the Slicer.
- Single Select: It restricts the selection to one item at a time.
Let me toggle the Show Select All option from Off to On. Now, you can see Select All under the Country Slicer
By toggling Single Select option from On to Off, you can enable the slicer to select multiple fields.
Let me select Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
