Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

We've captured the moments from FabCon & SQLCon that everyone is talking about, and we are bringing them to the community, live and on-demand. Starts on April 14th. Register now

Reply
fibaek
Helper I
Helper I

Simulate Browser Back Button (history-1)

Hello,

Does any of you execellent people have an idea of how to create a back button? My idea is to do somthing like executing a very simpel js function such as history.back(), however I have not found an easy way of doing this. I guess I can do it with a python script, but it seems a bit much importing some js library just to create a back button. Also I'm unsure if that can be executed on demand rather than at runtime. 

The scenario is a report with drill through to another report. I would like an elegant way to get back to the parent report, rather than using the browser back button.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

/Sune

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Hi @fibaek,

The back button is currently the "Power BI way" that users have to navigate back after cross-report drillthrough.

You can't simulate the window.history.back() operation via JS as R/Python/custom visuals are sandboxed from the main window, so calling that in any of these places will only invoke it on an embedded iframe with no history of its own (basically doing nothing for the end-user). I've tried this previously and just tried it again just to be sure it still doesn't work... it doesn't.

For consistency purposes, I would suggest that this is more of a feature request for cross-report drillthrough in that if a report is invoked via drillthrough then it should detect this and display a button, similar to drillthrough within a report. I just looked and there's already an idea created for it that you can add a vote to (I've added mine).

Regards,

Daniel





Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution!

Proud to be a Super User!


On how to ask a technical question, if you really want an answer (courtesy of SQLBI)




View solution in original post

4 REPLIES 4
lbendlin
Super User
Super User

That smells like bad UX.  Are you sure your users will understand this?

Yes, I believe the users will understand it. All other navigation in the report is handled with buttons, so using the browser back button will be counter-intuitive for the users. The UXers are also completely in line with this. And so are the users, who I have spoken with about it. 

Why do you consider this bad UX?

Hi @fibaek,

The back button is currently the "Power BI way" that users have to navigate back after cross-report drillthrough.

You can't simulate the window.history.back() operation via JS as R/Python/custom visuals are sandboxed from the main window, so calling that in any of these places will only invoke it on an embedded iframe with no history of its own (basically doing nothing for the end-user). I've tried this previously and just tried it again just to be sure it still doesn't work... it doesn't.

For consistency purposes, I would suggest that this is more of a feature request for cross-report drillthrough in that if a report is invoked via drillthrough then it should detect this and display a button, similar to drillthrough within a report. I just looked and there's already an idea created for it that you can add a vote to (I've added mine).

Regards,

Daniel





Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution!

Proud to be a Super User!


On how to ask a technical question, if you really want an answer (courtesy of SQLBI)




Hi,

 

Thanks for a very elaborate answer and sorry for not getting back to you with a decent reply. I definately voted for the idea as well. It would be a very nice addition.

 

/Sune

Helpful resources

Announcements
New to Fabric survey Carousel

New to Fabric Survey

If you have recently started exploring Fabric, we'd love to hear how it's going. Your feedback can help with product improvements.

Power BI DataViz World Championships carousel

Power BI DataViz World Championships - June 2026

A new Power BI DataViz World Championship is coming this June! Don't miss out on submitting your entry.

Join our Fabric User Panel

Join our Fabric User Panel

Share feedback directly with Fabric product managers, participate in targeted research studies and influence the Fabric roadmap.

March Power BI Update Carousel

Power BI Community Update - March 2026

Check out the March 2026 Power BI update to learn about new features.