Preserve Order of elements as typed/choosen in Slicer (PowerBI)

[lnofficial]

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working on a Power BI dashboard where users need to select multiple labels and the order of selection or typing matters because it defines the priority of releases.

I have a slicer/filter that allows selecting multiple values such as:

eDR11.1
eDR12.1
eDR16.1
eDR17.1

Users can either:

• click the values in the slicer, or

• type/paste a list of releases.

Selected FixVersions =
VAR SelectedVals =
VALUES ( TestPlan_ReleaseLabelDim[Label] )

RETURN
CONCATENATEX (
SelectedVals,
TestPlan_ReleaseLabelDim[Label],
" | "
)

---

Problem

Power BI does not preserve the order in which the user selects or types the values.

Example:

User selects:

eDR12.1
eDR11.1

Expected result:

eDR12.1 | eDR11.1

Actual result returned by Power BI:

eDR11.1 | eDR12.1

Is there any way in Power BI to:

1. Preserve the order in which items are selected in a slicer, or

2. Capture the sequence of typed values in a filter/search box, or

3. Access the selection order via DAX or Power Query?

[danextian · Accepted solution]

hi @lnofficial 

This isn't currently possible. Power BI does not remember the order in which slicer selections are made. The values if concatenated are sorted in ascending or descending order or by another value.

[v-ssriganesh]

Hello @lnofficial,

Hope everything’s going great with you. Just checking in has the issue been resolved or are you still running into problems? Sharing an update can really help others facing the same thing.

Thank you.

[v-ssriganesh]

Hello @lnofficial ,

We hope you're doing well. Could you please confirm whether your issue has been resolved or if you're still facing challenges? Your update will be valuable to the community and may assist others with similar concerns.

Thank you.

[cengizhanarslan]

Slicers do not preserve or expose selection sequence. If the sequence matters, you need to model it explicitly as a priority/rank rather than relying on slicer selection order.

[lnofficial]

In my case, I would like to model/set the rank as the user chooses. i.e., there is no static rank for the labels. I will have to calculate them dynamically too.

[v-hashadapu · Accepted solution]

Hi @lnofficial , Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Community Forum.

Even if the rank needs to be defined dynamically, the core limitation still remains, Power BI slicers only return the set of selected values, not the order in which they were selected or typed. That interaction sequence isn’t stored anywhere in the model, so DAX or Power Query cannot retrieve it. Because of that, the priority cannot be calculated from the slicer itself. If the order matters, capture it explicitly, for example by letting the user assign a priority/rank through a parameter or a small disconnected table and then use that priority column to control the ordering in CONCATENATEX.

[danextian · Accepted solution]

hi @lnofficial 

This isn't currently possible. Power BI does not remember the order in which slicer selections are made. The values if concatenated are sorted in ascending or descending order or by another value.