Using the Filter Pane Filtering in Power BI is a great way to reduce which rows of data you're using in your report and we often do this by using slicers.

So, for example, we can reduce the data to only use the rows where Florida is the state or where the year is 2021 and it's a great way to allow the user to explore the data for themselves.

There are other ways to use filters in Power BI and one of these is by using the filter pane.

The filter pane makes the filter a little bit more permanent. So the user isn't really going to change that. They will be working with the data and the filter is built into the report.

So when we use a filter pin, we can set a filter that applies to visual level only, just the one chart.

We can set it to page level, so all the visuals on that page will apply.

Or we can set it to report level, so all the pages and all the visuals will automatically use that filter.

Let's do a workout and see how to use the filter pane in Power BI.

So I'm going to use an Excel workbook here module 5 lesson, 2A.

We'll connect to that and we'll load in a worksheet and I'll take the credit transactions worksheet and load it into my report there.

So the first thing I'm going to do is just create a standard chart. I'm going to create a clustered column chart here and I'll use the amount field and the category fields. So we'll just make sure that's clustered column, there we go, and I'll open that up a little. I'm going to add another visual doesn't really matter too much what visual I use but I'm going to put a card in so I'll just click on the canvas click on the card and I'll bring in the amount. That's the total amount for all the rows of data.

What I'm really interested in seeing however is just the total amount for one particular category, and that is the home category.

So I don't want this chart to update when I do that. So I'm going to apply a visual level filter to the card so I'll select it and I'll just make sure my filter pane is open, sometimes collapsed like so we just click on the arrows and that opens it up again. If I have a visual selected I should see the fields that are being used, now on the card that's just the amount field. So I'm going to drag the field I want to filter on which is category and I'm going to place it in here underneath where it says filters on this visual.

So if I just click in there and I can select the filter I want so I'm going to just apply the home filter. There we go, and you can see here my card is updated but the basic column chart hasn't changed at all.

Now I'll just very quickly add in a second card there. So I'll just create a card and I'll use the same field again. I'll use the category fields.

Sorry, not category the amount field we'll bring in a cross. Then I'll add in another filter. So I'll try category in to filter on this visual, but I'll choose a different value. So I'll go for entertainment this time, so I have one card that uses just the rows for home category and other card that uses just the entertainment one.

So let's do one more filter, I'll keep my page as it is and I'm going to use the State field now at the minute the data is using all states, but I'm going to apply a filter so we're only looking at the information for Florida, but I want it to be applied to all the visuals on the page both the cards and the column chart. I'm just going to go to a slightly different section on the filter pane this time. So where it says filters in this page, I'm going to drag State in there.

And then I'll apply the filters. So it doesn't really matter too much which see it I go for let's just go for Florida. There we go.

And we can see right away that both cards and the column chart have got the filter to show only the rows where Florida is the State.