Bookmarks in the Power BI service

APPLIES TO: Power BI service for business users Power BI service for designers & developers Power BI Desktop Requires Pro or Premium license

Introduction to bookmarks

A bookmark captures the state of a report page. It includes the settings you've made to filters, slicers, and visuals on that page. After the report page is set the way you want, give it a friendly name. Now you can easily return to that state of the report page. Select a bookmark, and Power BI takes you back to that view.

Types of bookmarks

There are two types of Power BI bookmarks: personal and report. Report bookmarks are added to reports by report designers. When the designers share their reports with colleagues, the bookmarks travel with the report. Everyone who can open and view that report can also see and use the report bookmarks. Personal bookmarks can be created by anyone who can open a report, they don't even require edit permissions. However, if you create personal bookmarks and share your report, the personal bookmarks don't travel with the report. Personal bookmarks are for your use only.

This article explains how to create and use personal bookmarks. It also explains how to interact with report bookmarks that have been created by others and shared with you. Viewing shared reports and report bookmarks requires one or both of the following prerequisites:

• a Power BI Pro or a Premium Per User (PPU) license Which license do I have?
• for the report to be saved in Premium capacity and shared with you.

If you're designing reports and creating report bookmarks for others to use, see Create report bookmarks.

Other articles about bookmarks

• In the Power BI service and Power BI Desktop, report owners can create report bookmarks. For more information, read about report bookmarks.
• If you have edit permissions to the report, you can quickly build a bookmark navigation experience. Bookmark navigation is available for both personal and report bookmarks. Each bookmark is converted to a customizable button or dropdown menu.

Use personal bookmarks to save insights and build stories in Power BI

There are many uses for personal bookmarks. If you discover an interesting insight and want to preserve it, create a personal bookmark so you can return later. If you need to leave and want to preserve your current work, create a personal bookmark. You can even make a personal bookmark your default view of a report, so each time you return that view of the report page opens first.

You can also create a collection of personal bookmarks and arrange them in the order you want. Then you can step through each bookmark in a presentation to highlight a series of insights that tell a story. This feature works like a slideshow, where you select an arrow to go forward or backward. There's a limit of 20 personal bookmarks per report. For more information about creating a bookmark slide show, see Bookmarks as a slide show.

Open the Bookmarks pane

To open the Bookmarks pane, start on a report page and select the bookmarks icon and choose either Add a personal bookmark or Show more bookmarks.

Create personal bookmarks in the Power BI service

If you can view a report, then you can also add personal bookmarks. The maximum number of personal bookmarks per report is 20. When you create a bookmark, the following elements are saved with the bookmark:

• The current page
• Filters
• Slicers, including slicer type (for example, dropdown or list) and slicer state
• Visual selection state (such as cross-highlight filters)
• Sort order
• Drill location

If you have edit permissions to a report, you can set and save other elements that are saved with a bookmark. For example, you can decide which visuals on the page are visible when the bookmark is selected. To learn more about the report bookmarks and the Selection pane, see Using the Selection pane

Create two different personal bookmarks

Configure a report page the way you want it to appear in the bookmark. The following example has filters applied to the default report page:

1. Date is changed to include All dates.
2. Region filter is changed to include only West .
3. A specific data point on the doughnut chart visual is selected. This selection cross-filters and cross-highlights the other visuals on the report canvas.

Create the first bookmark

1. After your report page and visuals are arranged how you want them, from the Bookmarks pane, select Personal bookmarks > Add.

2. The personal bookmark gets a generic name, or you can enter a name. Select Save. To rename, make default, delete, or update your bookmark, select the ellipses next to the bookmark's name.

Create the second bookmark

1. Open a different report page and create another personal bookmark. The bookmark in the following example captures the YTD information for the VanArsdel company.

   

2. Now that you have two bookmarks, switch between them by selecting the bookmark in the Bookmarks pane.

3. To return to the original published view of the report, select the Reset icon, and then select Reset on the dialog.

   

Open report bookmarks

To view the report bookmarks created by the report designer, from the Bookmarks pane, select Report bookmarks.

Report bookmarks

If the report designer included report bookmarks, you find them under the Report bookmarks heading. This report page has two report bookmarks: Overview- By Manager and Overview-By Product.

Bookmarks as a slideshow

To present or view bookmarks in order, select View from the Bookmarks pane to begin a slideshow.

When in View mode, notice the following features:

• The name of the bookmark appears in the bookmark title bar, which appears at the bottom of the canvas.
• The bookmark title bar has arrows where you can move to the next or previous bookmark.
• To exit View mode, select Exit from the Bookmarks pane, or select the X in the bookmark title bar.

In View mode, you can close the Bookmarks pane to provide more space for your presentation. While in View mode, all visuals are interactive and available for cross-highlighting, like they are when interacting with them in other modes.

Share changes

While you can't directly share your personal bookmarks with others, there are some workarounds. These workarounds require that you have one or both of the following:

• Pro or PPU license
• Permissions to content saved in a workspace in Premium capacity

Here are a few ways you can share your view with others:

• Share your active view. If you have a personal bookmark active when you share a report, recipients who have read access to the report see the bookmarked version of that report page. Receipients don't see your bookmark in their "Personal bookmarks" list. They see the result of your personal bookmark.

  This personalized view of the report doesn't override the designer's original report or the designer's report bookmarks. Sharing with colleagues who don't already have read access requires reshare permissions. If you're unable to share your view of the report, contact the report owner to request reshare permission.

  When you share the report, you can choose to include your changes.

  

• Chat in teams. Similar to the previous method, with a personal bookmark active, you can share a report in Microsoft Teams. Select Chat in Teams from More options on the top menu. In the Chat in Teams dialog, enter the name of the Team or Channel that you want to share to. Select Share. You can also copy and share the URL from the Chat in Teams dialog. For more information, see Share personal bookmarks in Teams chat.

• Use the comment feature. With a personal bookmark active, add a comment. When other users select the comment, the current view is saved for them to view. For more information, see Add comments to dashboards and reports.

If you make changes to your personal bookmark after you share a report, it has no effect on your recipients' view. For example, if you share a report with a 2021 date filter applied and then change the year to 2022 in your bookmark, your recipient still sees the 2021 filter.

Reset all your changes to a report

From the upper-right corner of your report canvas, select Reset to default. This action removes all your changes in the report and sets it back to the designer's last saved view of the report. Resetting the report doesn't delete the bookmarks.

Considerations and limitations

In this release of personal bookmarks, there are a few considerations and limitations to keep in mind.

• The bookmark captures the state of the page at the time the bookmark was created. When someone selects the bookmark, Power BI attempts to show them that bookmark in its original report state. However, there are situations where showing the bookmark isn't possible. For example, if the report owner changes the name of a field that is used by the bookmark, Power BI will no longer display visuals, filters, or slicers that use that field. Certain visuals will display no data for the renamed field. Filtered or sliced visuals will revert to the default view.

• Most Power BI custom visuals should work well with personal bookmarking. If you run into trouble with bookmarking and a Power BI custom visual, contact the creator of that visual, and ask them to add support for bookmarks.

• Generally, your personal bookmarks aren't affected if the report designer updates or republishes the report. However, if the designer makes major changes to the report, such as removing fields used by a personal bookmark, you'll receive an error message the next time you attempt to open that bookmark.

• This feature is supported in the Power BI mobile apps for iOS and Android tablets and phones, and in the Power BI Windows app.

• Because personal bookmarks capture the exploration state of the current page, personal bookmarks don't capture changes to other pages. For example, if you have sync-slicers in your report and you personalize the sync-slicer to use a different field and capture a personal bookmark, then the personal bookmark only captures the slicer change on the current page.

Next steps

Personalize visuals in a report