How to create a drillthrough in Power BI: step by step

João Barros 15 de July de 2026 4 min read

Drillthrough in Power BI lets you jump from a summary visual to a detail page that is already filtered by the element you clicked. Instead of scattering dozens of filters across the report, you give users a natural path: they see a sales total by country and, with a single click, land on the detail for that exact country. It is one of the simplest ways to make a report interactive without writing code, and over these steps you will set up a complete drillthrough, with a back button and a dynamic title.

Prerequisites

Power BI Desktop installed — the free version is enough.
A report with a summary page, such as a Sales by Country chart.
A table with the column you will use as a filter, like País[Nome].
Some detail data to show, such as an orders table.

Step 1: Create the detail page

Start by adding a new page to the report: in the page tabs at the bottom, click the + and give it a clear name, such as Country Detail. This will be the target page, the one that opens when someone drills through. Place on it the visuals that answer the question "what is behind this number?": a table of orders, cards with total sales and margin, maybe a monthly trend chart. Do not worry about filters yet — in the next step the drillthrough takes care of that.

Step 2: Define the drillthrough field

With the detail page open, click an empty area of the canvas to make sure no visual is selected. In the Visualizations pane, find the Drill through section and drag the field you want to filter by there — for example País[Nome]. This field is what links the detail page to the rest of the report. You can drag more than one field to allow drillthrough on several levels, and the Keep all filters toggle controls whether the filters from the source page travel to the detail page as well.

Step 3: Use the back button

As soon as you add the field, Power BI automatically creates a back-arrow button in the top-left corner of the detail page. That button takes the user back to the exact page they came from, keeping the context. You can move it, resize it or restyle it to match your theme, but avoid deleting it, because it closes the navigation loop. To test it in Power BI Desktop, use Ctrl + click.

Step 4: Drill through from the summary

Go back to the summary page and right-click a data point — for example, the Portugal bar. In the context menu, choose Drill through and then Country Detail. The detail page opens immediately, already filtered to Portugal, and every visual you placed there shows only that country's data. For this to work, the source visual must contain the drillthrough field (or a related field) — in this case, the country.

Step 5: Show the context with a measure (optional)

A detail page is much clearer if it states right away which item it is showing. Create a measure with a dynamic title and use it as a visual title or inside a card:

Titulo Detalhe = 
"Detalhe de " & SELECTEDVALUE('País'[Nome], "todos os países")

The SELECTEDVALUE function returns the filtered country when only one is selected and, otherwise, the alternative text. When you drill into Portugal's detail, the title updates to show that country automatically.

Check the result

To confirm everything works, right-click several points on the summary page: the Drill through option should always list the Country Detail page. When you click it, the page opens filtered to the right value and the title measure shows the matching country. The back button should return you to the origin. Once published to the Power BI Service, the behaviour is the same, with the advantage that a right-click is enough, without Ctrl.

Conclusion

In just a few steps you built a drillthrough navigation that turns a static report into a fluid analysis tool, where every number can tell its own detailed story. From here you can add several drill-through fields, enable cross-report drillthrough to jump between different reports, or combine this technique with bookmarks to create even richer experiences. Which detail page would make the most sense in your next report?