A quick tip to make Power BI more useful. Read below on how to add search to any drop-down slicer!
Problem
The problem is as follows. A slicer in a Power BI report does not have a search capability, and the drop down is a lengthy list. Manually scrolling through the list is impracticable.
For example, take this slicer below. This slicer has thousands of choices. It appears to be sorted alphanumerically (A to Z) yet, if looking for a specific item, it may be time consuming to select the correct value if searching for Item 500.
Ideally, the report design would have included a search enabled by default, such as the example below.
That being said...updates take time, require approval, so on and so forth. Keep reading to see how you can add the search without waiting for a report update.
Solution
The search bar on slicer can be activated and deactivated very easily using the key combination Ctrl + F. Simply click on the title/header of the slicer and CTRL+F will enable or disable search bar. Important to note, this only works when clicking the slicer header in a collapsed state, without the drop-down expanded.
See the GIF below.
Alternatively, if preferring to not remember shortcut key combinations, clicking on the ellipses on the slicer can also enable or disable search.
