Opening and closing rows and column groups
Rows
A row that has children - or whose children can still be fetched from Power BI - has a + / - icon in front of its label.
- A click on the icon opens the row (shows its children) or closes it. It works in the report and in Focus Mode, and does not select the row.
- Under On-Demand Loading, opening a row whose children have not arrived yet fetches them. The row shows open at once, empty for a moment, and the loading indicator and the dot of the layer turn orange.
- Every row of a group reserves the same room for the icon, so the labels of siblings line up whether they have an icon or not.
- The children of a row are pushed in by the Indent (default 20 px per level, see the Spacing panel).
- With Hide NULL Rows on, a row whose children are all blank gets no icon.
- With Collapse Repeating Levels on, a chain of rows that only repeat the same value is one row, and its icon opens to where the hierarchy branches again (Filter).
- Which rows are open is saved with the report and restored when it is opened again.
The look of the icon - Plus / Minus, Box, Rounded Box or Arrows - is set in View tab > Display > Collapse / Expand Icons, separately for rows and for column groups.
Opening many rows at once
| How | Result |
|---|---|
| Layer Toggles bar | Button N opens the whole table down to layer N (Layer Toggles). |
| Row menu > Expand > All Rows > Expand Layer | Opens the layer of the row you right-clicked: the layer toggle that shows the level below it. |
| Row menu > Expand > All Rows > To Level | Opens the whole table down to Level 1 ... Level N. |
| Row menu > Expand > Selected Row > Expand Row | Opens that row one step. It never closes a row and leaves what is open below it open. |
| Row menu > Expand > Selected Row > To Level | Opens that row and everything below it down to a level, and closes what is deeper inside it. |
| Drill down in Power BI | Opens the rows above the new layer for you (Set up the visual). |
See the row menu for details.
Column groups
A column that is a group (a year with quarters under it, say) shows the same kind of icon in its header. A click closes the group
- its columns fold into one - or opens it again. Which groups are closed is saved with the report. Closing a group only changes which columns are shown, never a value.
Groups can also be hidden with Hide Column - that is a separate setting: see the column menu.
Reset
Reset (Start tab) closes all rows and opens all column groups again, as on a first paint.