Disabling cross highlighting/filtering by default option is not working

[VarunLakhwani]

I was working on a report in Power BI Desktop and encountered this issue. I wanted to turn off the default cross highlighting/filtering in the report. I went to File -> Options and Settings -> Options. Under Current File -> Query reduction, I turned on 'Disabling cross highlighting/filtering by default'. However, it does not work as expected. Also, when I saved, closed the file, and opened it again, the same option was turned off.

[Laz-MetisBI]

Agree - This seems to have stopped working for me also! Tried all the basics to troubleshoot (close Desktop, check it it applies only to new visuals and not existing, etc.), but not working as expected.

[dthompsonKairos]

Funny we need an "Idea" to be up voted for fixing a feature that already exists

[C_H]

Really need this to be fixed. And I agree: why is an idea needed?!

[karimm]

I got confirmation from MS Support that it's been resolved in Jul2025 PBI Desktop version. And it works indeed! 🙂

@VarunLakhwani  @C_H  @dthompsonKairos @Laz-MetisBI 

After testing it further, I shared this feedback with Microsoft:

I was so excited to see this feature working in the first place.

But this excitement turned into disappointment the next day once we realized how it works.

We realized it is changing the default behavior of elements interactivity, including existing ones.

Example:

A report has 20 elements on the page and only need 5 of them to interact with each other.

1. Before this feature
• the developer would need to select each of the other 15 and turn off its interactions with all other elements => about 15*14 = 210 clicks at least (usually much more as some elements hide below others)
• The 5 remaining elements are left untouched (default behavior of interactivity ON).
2. Now the feature is announced and turned on in the file:
• What will happen is that those 5 remaining ones which had default behaviour, are not interacting anymore!
• The developer, would need to identify them first, and then go one by one and turn on their interactivity=> another 20 clicks at least.

We have more than 20 pages in our reports and on each we have much more than 20 elements.

So turning this feature on is a real pain due to the additional overhead described in bullet #2.

A better implementation would be recommended.

Maybe one that when turning this feature on would “freeze” the current interaction settings and only change the default for NEWLY ADDED ELEMENTS.

[MBZA]

For me this option is still not doing anything. Or does it only work for DirectQuery sources?