How to create Slicer in PowerBI

In this blog, we’ll learn How to Create a Slicer in PowerBI. Firstly, we have to understand what is it and when should we use it.

Slicer: It is a visualization tool that help user to filter data interactively. It visualize data in form of list, tile, dropdown.

Table of Contents

Dataset Description

This dataset comprises sales statistics pertaining to a retail enterprise. The information encompasses transactional data, including specific product information, sales numbers, and customer data, which is tracked and recorded over a period of time.

Get the dataset here.

Column Name	Description
Date	The date on which the sales transaction occurred.
Product	The name or identification of the product sold.
Quantity	The number of units of the product sold in the transaction.
Price	The unit price of the product at the time of the transaction.
Rate	The rate of the product after applying any discounts.
Discount	The discount applied to the product during the sale, either in percentage or monetary value.
Customer	The name or unique ID of the customer making the purchase.
Location	The geographical location (city, region, or country) where the transaction took place.
Total Sale	The total sales value for the transaction, calculated as `Quantity * Rate`.
Total Profit	The total profit generated from the transaction, calculated after deducting the cost of the goods sold from the total sales.
Target Sale	The sales target set for the transaction, which could be used to assess performance against goals.

Sample of Data:

Procedure to Create Slicer in PowerBI

Step1: Open your PowerBI Desktop on your Device

Step2: Click on Get Data button in Home Ribbon and select Text/CSV.

Step3: Open Prompt box will be open to select your text or csv file.

Step4: After selection of dataset, It will pop up a window for Load OR Transform Data. Click on Load to use data on PowerBI.

Step5: In the following picture, data has been loaded successfully.

Step6: Select Slicer from Visualizations Section (Right Hand Side).

Note: In the PowerBI, the slicer has an upgrade called ‘Slicer New’, and the tile comes with default and advanced styles.

Step7:Here, we’ll put the following data (from Sales) in different fields:

Field

Date (Month)

There are lots of things like Filters and Format, that can be apply on your visual.

Slicer header = Off
Values 🡪 Values 🡪 Color = #E6E6E6

In General Section,

Effect 🡪 Background 🡪 color = #000000 (Black)
Effect 🡪 Visual border 🡪 color = #118DFF (Blue)
Effect 🡪 Visual border 🡪 Rounded corners = 10 px
Effect 🡪 Shadow = On

Example:

What the Chart indicating:

With this Slicer, we are using the month value as a filter to interact with other visuals.

Graph with selecting filter ‘August’

Graph without selecting filter

Conclusion

With a Slicer, we can filter data in a report or dashboard interactively and dynamically. A Slicer provides a user-friendly interface with buttons or dropdowns allowing users to select one or more criteria to filter the displayed data. The slicer can be used with various data visualizations, such as tables, charts, and maps, enabling users to focus on specific subsets of data without altering the underlying dataset. This helps explore and analyze data more efficiently, as users can quickly adjust the view to display relevant information based on the selected filter criteria, such as dates, categories, or geographic regions.

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