How to Add Checkboxes to a Power BI Slicer (Style, Color and Filtering)

A project manager asked me why the slicer on her new report was a dropdown when every slicer she’d built before showed a list of checkboxes. Microsoft changed the default: new slicers start as a dropdown. The checkbox list is still there; it’s just one setting away.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to show a slicer as checkboxes, switch to radio buttons, add a Select all option, change the checkbox color, lay the options out horizontally, and build a simple Yes/No checkbox that changes a measure.

Quick answer: Select the slicer, open Format visual > Visual > Slicer settings > Options, and set Style to Vertical list to show checkboxes. Under Selection, turn on Single select for radio buttons or Show “Select all” option for a Select all box. Change the checkbox color in the Selection icon section.

Show a slicer as checkboxes

Add a Slicer from the Visualizations pane and drag a field into Field. New slicers use the Dropdown style, and date fields often show a range slider instead. Here, End Date is in the slicer:

To get checkboxes, go to Format visual > Slicer settings > Options and change Style to Vertical list:

Each value now has a checkbox:

Text fields work the same way, such as a list of project names:

The styles you can choose are Dropdown, Vertical list, Tile, and, for dates and numbers, Between, Before, After, Relative date, Relative time and Date picker. Only Vertical list and Dropdown show checkboxes.

Selection options

Under Slicer settings > Selection:

• Single select (off by default) allows only one value. In a vertical list, the checkboxes become radio buttons.
• Multi-select with Ctrl: when on, people hold Ctrl to pick several values; when off, each click adds or removes a value.
• Show “Select all” option (off by default) adds a Select all checkbox at the top.

Radio buttons

With the slicer as a vertical list:

Turn on Single select:

A Select all option

Turn off Multi-select with Ctrl and turn on Show “Select all” option:

Select all applies no filter. If someone selects all and then clears a few, Power BI saves that as “everything except these,” so new values added in a later refresh are included automatically.

Change the checkbox color

Checkboxes used to be stuck in the default gray:

Since May 2026, the format pane has a top-level Selection icon section for the Vertical list and Dropdown styles. Open it and pick a color for the checkbox or radio button.

You can also style the values: under Values, set the font color, and under Background, a color behind each item:

Show the options horizontally

For a row of options across the page, change Style to Tile. Starting from a vertical list of departments:

The values become tiles. Resize the slicer, or turn on Responsive, to fit them on one row:

Tiles don’t show checkboxes; people click the tile itself. For more control over horizontal buttons, such as images and colors per button, use the button slicer instead; see how to use the Power BI button slicer.

Build a Yes/No toggle slicer

Sometimes you want a checkbox that changes what a measure calculates, not a filter on a column. This Event Tracker Table has event types, departments, event names and attendees:

The goal: when “Yes” is selected, show attendees of the IT “Power Automate Basics” workshop only; when “No,” show everyone. First, create a small table for the slicer with Modeling > New table, and name it Filter Toggle:

Filter Toggle = UNION ( ROW ( "Status", "Yes" ), ROW ( "Status", "No" ) )

Then add a measure with New measure:

Total Attendees (Toggle) =
VAR _choice = SELECTEDVALUE ( 'Filter Toggle'[Status] )
VAR _filtered =
    CALCULATE (
        SUM ( 'Event Tracker Table'[Attendees] ),
        'Event Tracker Table'[Event Type] = "Workshop",
        'Event Tracker Table'[Department] = "IT",
        'Event Tracker Table'[Event Name] = "Power Automate Basics"
    )
VAR _all = SUM ( 'Event Tracker Table'[Attendees] )
RETURN
    SWITCH ( _choice, "Yes", _filtered, "No", _all, BLANK () )

SELECTEDVALUE returns the chosen status, and SWITCH picks the right total. With nothing or both selected, it returns BLANK(), which is cleaner than returning empty text “”; mixing text and numbers in one measure causes formatting problems in visuals.

Put Status in a slicer (set to Single select) and the measure in a card:

“No” shows all attendees, and “Yes” shows only the workshop’s:

Tips

• Search a long slicer from its … menu, or press Ctrl+F while it’s selected.
• Sort the values from … > Sort axis.
• For dates, the Date picker style gives a calendar with relative dates, which is often easier than a long list of checkboxes.

These Power BI slicer tutorials may help next:

• How to Add and Customize Button Slicer in Power BI?
• Power BI Slicer Dropdown [Setup, Search, Sort, Fixes & When to Use It]
• Power bi show items with no data
• Hide or Remove Column Headers on Power BI Matrix Visual
• Power bi show value as percentage + 13 Examples
• Power Bi count function – DAX Examples

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