How to Add Slicer Checkbox in Power BI?

I recently used the slicer checkbox in Power BI for a project. So, I thought of explaining everything about it. In this tutorial, I will explain how to add a checkbox to a slicer visual on a Power BI report.

We will also check the following points:

• Change the Checkbox Style into a Check Mark in Slicer
• Convert the Slicer Checkbox to a Radio button in Power BI
• Change Power BI Slicer Checkbox Color
• Display Horizontal Slicer Checkboxes in Power BI
• Filter Values in Slicer Checkbox in Power BI

Create Slicer Checkbox in Power BI

Let’s see how to add a checkbox slicer visual in a Power BI report view.

By default, when you add a text or numeric value to a Slicer visual, it displays as checkboxes. You can see from the image below:

But when you add a date field to the Slicer, it will appear with a horizontal sliding bar displaying the minimum and maximum date values.

Let’s see how to change the date slider slicer to a checkbox slicer in Power BI Desktop.

1. Launch the Power BI Desktop app -> click on the ‘Get data‘ button from the ribbon menu.
2. Select the slicer from the Visualizations pane.
3. In the field, drag and drop the End Date column from the data pane.

4. Then, you can see the slicer visual will be displayed with a horizontal sliding bar.

Change the slider bar into a checkbox:

5. Then, select the Slicer visual, and go to the Visualizations window.
6. Click on the ‘Format your visual‘ icon.
7. Expand Slicer settings.
8. Under the Options section, change the style from “Between” to “Vertical list“.

Output:

In the screenshot below, you can see the Power BI slicer checkbox visual.

See Slicers in the Power BI Report

Change the Slicer Checkbox Style into a Check Mark

I will show you here how to change the check box style into a check mark in the Power BI Slicer visual.

When selecting the slicer item values, the entire check box is filled with black.

To convert the style of the Power BI Slicer checkbox, follow the quick steps below:

1. On the Power BI Desktop report view, select the slicer visual.
2. Navigate to the Visualizations window, select the ‘Format your visual’ icon.
3. Expand Slicer settings -> Open ‘Selection‘ dropdown.
4. Then, uncheck the Multi-select option.
5. Next, Toggle on the Show ‘Select all’ only option in the slicer.

6. After that, the ‘Select all‘ check box will be added to the slicer visual at the top.
7. When you select the item values in the slicer visual, the slicer visual displays a check mark next to the chosen values.

Convert a Slicer Checkbox Style to a Radio Button in Power BI

In this section, I will show you how to change the slicer checkbox style to a radio button style in Power BI.

As you already know from the above sections, the slicer visual will display with a checkbox in Power BI.

Look at the steps to change it:

1. Select the Slicer visual present on the Power BI report page.
2. Open Format visual window, which displays with a paint brush.
3. Expand Slicer settings -> Open ‘Selection‘ dropdown.
4. Then, turn on the Single select option.

Output:

After applying the changes, you can see that the Slicer visual appears as radio buttons, allowing you to select a single item value from the list of Slicer values.

Check Add and Customize Button Slicer in Power BI

Change the Color of the Checkbox in the Power BI Slicer

Below, a screenshot shows the Power BI Slicer checkboxes with the default light grey color.

I now want to change the checkbox color in the slicer from the default grey to a bright color.

Solution:

Unfortunately, we cannot change the color of these checkbox squares. This is because, for checkboxes, there is currently no setting available to change the color of the square box and fill color.

Note:

You can vote this idea to improve the feature of changing the color of Power BI Slicer checkboxes on Microsoft Fabric Community Idea page.

However, you can highlight the Slicer field values by changing their font color and background color.

Steps to change Font color and Background color in Power BI Slicer:

1. Select the Slicer visual on the Power BI report canvas.
2. Go to the Visualizations pane and select ‘Format your visual icon’.
3. Expand Values -> In the Font color option, choose the color of the chart (click on the downward arrow).
4. To change the Background color, expand “Background” and choose a color according to your preference.

Result:

Display Horizontal Checkboxes in Power BI Slicer Visual

Let’s see how to display the horizontal checkboxes on a single row in Power BI Slicer.

To arrange the checkbox slicers horizontally, you need to change the Slicer settings style to Tile view. In the Tile view, you can see that the slicer list values can be arranged horizontally.

The slicer will be changed from vertical to horizontal, but there is no method to place a checkbox on the horizontal slicer. But you select the item value by clicking on the tile in the horizontal slicer.

The image placed below shows the project-related ‘Department’ values placed in a Slicer visual with checkboxes.

Quick steps to change the Power BI Slicer settings:

1. On the Power BI Desktop report view, select the slicer visual.
2. From the Visualizations window, select the ‘Format visual’ section.
3. Then, expand Slicer settings.
4. Select Tile from the style drop-down options.

5. After that, you can see that slicer values have been changed into tiles.

Then, you can drag the values into a single row to display the slicer horizontally. But the checkboxes won’t be displayed on the horizontal slicer.

Read How to Add a Search Box to Power BI Slicer?

How to Filter by Checkbox in Power BI Slicer

Here, you can learn how to filter data using the Power BI slicer checkbox in Power BI Desktop.

In the screenshot below, you can see I created a sample table, an ‘Event Tracker Table‘ with columns [Event Type, Department, Event Name, and Attendees ].

Now, I wanted to filter the data and display the total number of attendees who participated in the event, based on the filtered conditions.

• Event Type = Workshop
• Department = IT
• Event Name = “Power Automate Basics”

See the steps below:

1. On the Power BI Desktop, create a slicer table.
2. To create a slicer table, click Modeling -> New Table.
3. Then write the following DAX formula:

Table = UNION(ROW("Status","Yes"),ROW("Status","No"))

4. Then, select the table(Event Tracker Table) from the data pane, and click on the New measure from the ribbon.

I have created a new measure that calculates the total number of attendees based on the specified filter conditions. Look at the Measure in the code.

Total No Of Attendees = 
VAR _Checkbox =
    SELECTEDVALUE ( 'Table'[Status] )
VAR _YES =
    SUMX (
        FILTER (
            'Event Tracker Table',
            'Event Tracker Table'[Event Type] = "Workshop"
                && 'Event Tracker Table'[Department] = "IT"
                && 'Event Tracker Table'[Event Name] = "Power Automate Basics"
        ),
        'Event Tracker Table'[Attendees]
    )
VAR _NO =
    SUM ( 'Event Tracker Table'[Attendees])
RETURN
    IF (
        HASONEFILTER ( 'Table'[Status]),
        IF ( _Checkbox = "Yes", _YES, _NO ),
        ""
    )

5. Now, go to the Report View and click the Slicer visual in the Visualizations pane. In the field, drag and drop the ‘Status‘ from the Table in the field pane.

6. Next, I will add a Card visual to the Power BI report page that displays the measure result. By default, it will display a blank value. Drag and drop the Measure [Total No Of Attendees] onto the Field section.

If you select “No” in the slicer checkbox, the total number of attendees will be displayed without applying any filters.

If you select “Yes” to show results filtered by (Event Type = “Workshop”), (Department = “IT”), and (Event Name = “Power Automate Basics”).

This is how to filter by a checkbox in a Power BI Slicer.

In this tutorial, I explained how to work with the slicer checkbox in Power BI Desktop.

Adding a slicer will show the checkboxes by default, which filter the report data by selecting the values in the slicer. However, in the case of Date fields, it will display a sliding bar instead of checkboxes.

You can also change the slicer settings to show the date values as checkboxes. However, I recommend using the default sliding bar, as it simplifies filtering the report in Power BI.

Read Related Power BI Tutorials:

• Power BI Slicer Filter Another Slicer
• How to use Power BI Slicer Panel
• Power BI Slicer Filters Another Slicer
• Power BI Create Measure Switch Statement

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.