How to improve user experience with visual tables having many columns in Power BI?

[Martapv]

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a Power BI report that includes a table visual with many columns. I’m concerned that showing all columns at once makes the table overwhelming and hard to read, which can affect the user experience.

I’d like to know if there is a recommended way to:

• Allow users to expand or drill down to see additional details only if they want to.

• Use tooltips to show extra information without cluttering the table.

• Configure the table so that when exporting data, all columns appear even if they are not visible in the report.

• Or any other technique or alternative visuals to handle tables with many columns in a more user-friendly way.

I would really appreciate any advice or solutions to improve usability when dealing with wide tables in Power BI.

Thanks in advance!

[v-echaithra]

Hi @Martapv ,

As we haven’t heard back from you, we wanted to kindly follow up to check if the solution provided for the issue worked? or Let us know if you need any further assistance?
If our response addressed, please mark it as Accept as solution and click Yes if you found it helpful.

Regards,
Chaithra.

[v-echaithra]

Hi @Martapv ,

I hope this information is helpful. Please let me know if you have any further questions or if you'd like to discuss this further. If this answers your question, please Accept it as a solution and give it a 'Kudos' so others can find it easily.

Thank you.

[v-echaithra]

Hi @Martapv ,

We wanted to kindly follow up to check if the solution provided for the issue worked? or Let us know if you need any further assistance?
If our response addressed, please mark it as Accept as solution and click Yes if you found it helpful.

Regards,
Chaithra.

[v-echaithra · Accepted solution]

Hi @Martapv ,

Thank you for reaching Microsoft Community.

Use drillable visuals
The simplest way to show details is to use drillable visuals. The matrix visual is an excellent choice because it allows drilling on rows and/or columns. Therefore, by assigning hierarchies or multiple fields, report consumers can drill to the level of detail that they want. For example, the matrix rows could show years, and the report consumer could drill down to quarter, month, and date levels.

Add drillthrough
Drillthrough will navigate the report consumer to a different page, possibly in a different report, and it can show details. The main benefit of drillthrough is that you don't need to clutter a report page with details. Instead, the details are available when required. Toggle between summary and detailed views using bookmarks.

Use the Paginated report visual to embed a Power BI paginated report in your report. Paginated reports can connect directly to source databases, providing you with the ability to present transaction-level detail that's not stored in the Power BI semantic model. Power BI’s paginated reports allow exporting the full dataset, even if some columns are hidden.

If our response addressed, please mark it as Accept as solution and click Yes if you found it helpful.

Regards,
Chaithra.

Power BI’s paginated reports allow exporting the full dataset, even if some columns are hidden.

[BhavinVyas3003]

• Use field parameters to let users choose which columns to display via a slicer.
• Create drill-through pages to show full details only when a user selects a row.
• Apply report page tooltips to show extra data on hover without cluttering the main view.
• Use bookmarks with buttons to switch between different table views (e.g., Summary vs. Full).
• Replace the table with a matrix visual using expand/collapse to manage column groups.
• Keep the table visual minimal in the report, but ensure all columns are included in the export by using DAX or Power Query to prepare the full export-ready table separately.