How to Add and Customize Button Slicer in Power BI?

Power BI button slicer is one of the latest visuals launched by Microsoft, which enhances the plain slicer into interactive buttons that help make the report layout and visualization more attractive.

Through this tutorial, you’ll learn how to ‘Create a Button Slicer‘ in the Power BI report canvas, along with the various customizations, which include:

• Displaying Button Slicer Horizontally in Power BI
• Format Power BI Slicer Buttons with Color
• Display Power BI Slicer Buttons in Different Colors
• Arrange Button Slicer in Descending Order Power BI
• Change Shape of Power BI Slicer Buttons
• Align Slicer Button Text to Center in Power BI

Add Button Slicer in Power BI Desktop

If you have the latest version of Power BI Desktop installed, you will be able to view the Button Slicer visual in the Visualizations pane.

Note:

The button slicer (preview) is currently in preview and only available for Power BI Desktop.

The screenshot below shows the Power BI Button Slicer visual present in the Visualizations pane, after installation.

If you are unable to see the Button Slicer visual in Power BI, follow the steps below to enable it.

1. Open Power BI Desktop.
2. Click “Options and settings” under the File menu -> Select Options.

3. In the Global options window, go to the ‘Preview features‘ section.
4. Then, select Button slicer. Click on Ok to enable the feature.

Next, restart your Power BI Desktop. You will view the Button Slicer visual under the Visualizations pane.

Create a Button Slicer in Power BI

The Power BI button slicer has many unique properties not found in other slicers, including customizable button styles, conditional formatting for labels, a grid layout for buttons, and the integration of images on slicer buttons.

Let’s see how to create a Button Slicer on the Power BI report page:

For this example, I have an Excel file containing ‘Employee Details‘ including departments, Performance, Salary, and more.

Here, I wanted to add a slicer button visual to the Power BI report based on the Department values.

Let’s see how to add a button slicer to a Power BI report:

1. Launch the Power BI desktop app, and add a data source to the Power BI report.
2. Here, my data source is an Excel file, so I’m selecting ‘Import data from Excel‘. You can choose according to your data source.

Once loaded, the data will appear in the Data pane.

3. Then, navigate to the Visualizations pane, click on the “Button slicer” visual to add it to the report canvas.
4. Once added, drag and drop the value [Department] from the data pane to the Slicer Field option.

Then, you can see the slicer now displays buttons with the Department names. Refer to the image below.

This is how to add a button slicer to your Power BI report.

Display Power BI Button Slicer Horizontally

Now, I will explain here how to display the slicer buttons horizontally in the Power BI report view.

The image below shows the Power BI button slicer:

Now, I wanted to display the Slicer button horizontally in a single row.

Check out the Steps below:

1. Select the Button Slicer visual on Power BI desktop report view.
2. Go to the Visualizations pane -> Select ‘Layout‘ option under Format your visual icon.
3. Choose Arrangement to Single row.
4. Select the Maximum buttons shown according to your requirements. Here, I have selected ‘6‘ because there are six department values.

Output:

This is how to display the Slicer buttons horizontally.

Check Out: Add and Customize a Dropdown Slicer in Power BI

Fill Color in Power BI Slicer Button

By default, the slicer button will appear with a white background color, as shown in the image below.

You can format the button color by selecting the desired color in the Format visual pane.

See the steps mentioned:

1. On the Power BI desktop report canvas app, select the slicer visual.
2. Go to Visualizations pane -> Click on Format your visual option.
3. Under the Visual tab, select the Expand Buttons option.

4. Under Buttons, select the ‘Fill‘ section. Then, select the Color drop-down and choose the desired color from the Theme colors window.

Output:

Then you can see that the Power BI Slicer button visual got filled with color.

Display Power BI Slicer Buttons in Different Colors

Similarly, we can also display the slicer buttons in different colors in Power BI by creating rules.

Here, I will take the same button slicer shown in the above example with different department values. I wanted to display the slicer buttons in various colors according to their department value.

See the steps below:

1. Select the button slicer on Power BI report canvas.
2. Go to the Visualizations pane and click “Format your visual“.
3. Then, select Buttons. Expand Fill section.
4. Next, click on the fx icon to proceed with different colors.

5. After that, Fill color – State window opens. Provide the parameters below.
   • What field should we base this on? – Select the value from the drop-down. Here, I’m providing color based on the Department.
   • Rules: Configure the rules and select a color.

Then, click on the OK button.

Result: Power BI Button Slicer visual in different colors

Learn: Show All Values in Power BI Matrix

Sort Button Slicer in Descending Order in Power BI

Now, let me show you how to change the order of slicer buttons in Power BI.

If we take a textual field as data in a slicer, then it will be sorted alphabetically. Similarly, if we use a numerical field as data, it will sort in ascending or descending order by number.

Note:

By default, the button slicer shows the values in ascending order.

The Button slicer visual below displays the text value in the [Department] field.

To sort the button slicer values, click the More options icon (…) present on the top of Visual -> Choose Sort descending or Sort ascending option according to your requirement.

Here, I’ve selected the Sort descending option, so that the slicer buttons will be sorted in descending order.

More: Power BI Matrix Visual Conditional Formatting

Change Shape of Power BI Slicer Buttons

By default, the slicer buttons will display in a Rectangle shape when you add a Button Slicer visual to the Power BI report canvas.

You can change the shape of Power BI slicer buttons by following the steps below:

1. On the Power BI report view, select the button slicer visual.
2. Under ‘Format your visual section,’ select the ‘Expand Buttons‘ option.
3. Then, inside the ‘Apply settings to‘ -> Choose Rounded Rectangle from the drop-down options.

Result:

Suppose you change the shape to ‘Snipped tab, both top‘ option. The slicer buttons will appear as follows:

Result:

Check Out: Two Various Ways to Change the Visual in Power BI

Align Power BI Slicer Buttons Text to Center

By default, the title of the slicer button will be aligned on the left side of the visual in Power BI report view.

From the above examples, you can see that the text values are displayed on the left side in the Power BI slicer buttons.

You can align the Power BI button slicer text to the center, following the steps below.

1. Select the Button slicer visual. Go to the Format section under the Visualizations pane.
2. Then, click on Callout values.

3. Expand the Values section. Choose ‘Center alignment‘ option under Horizontal alignment.

Output:

This guide focuses on adding & customizing the Button Slicer visual in Power BI.

Through this tutorial, we have learnt about the Power BI Button slicer and its features. I hope you found this article informative. Do mention your suggestions in the section placed below.

Other Articles You May Read:

• Power BI Slicer between two dates
• Remove Blank From Slicer in Power BI
• Create a Measure based on Slicer in Power BI
• Power BI slicer multiple columns with examples

Bijay Kumar

After working for more than 18 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (12 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.