In Power BI, what report state does a bookmark capture when you save it?

## The mental model A bookmark is a snapshot of *how the page is configured*, not of what it showed. Think of it as a saved set of knob positions: which slicer values are picked, which visuals are visible, how a table is sorted, how far a chart is drilled. Applying the bookmark puts the knobs back and lets the visuals re-query the model. Nothing about the data is stored, which is why a bookmark taken last quarter shows this quarter's numbers when replayed today, and why it can never surface data a reader's security role forbids. ## What is captured, in three groups **Data** — filter state at report, page and visual level, slicer selections, the current cross-highlight selection, sort order on visuals, and drill level within a hierarchy. **Display** — visual visibility as set in the Selection pane, plus spotlight and focus-mode state. This is the group that makes toggle buttons possible. **Current page** — whether applying the bookmark also navigates to the page it was taken on. Each group can be turned off for an individual bookmark, and this is the single most useful thing to know about them. A bookmark with **Data** unticked swaps a chart for a table without stomping the reader's slicer selections — exactly what you want for a "show as table" toggle. A bookmark with everything ticked is a "reset the page" button. The **All visuals / Selected visuals** scope matters for the same reason. A bookmark scoped to selected visuals only touches the ones highlighted when you saved it, leaving the rest of the page alone. Broad-scoped toggle bookmarks are the usual cause of "my button also reset the date slicer". ## What is not captured The data itself, obviously. But also: changes to the *structure* of a report made after the bookmark was saved. Bookmarks store a description of a page as it stood, so adding a new visual or a new slicer later leaves existing bookmarks unaware of it, and they can behave oddly — the classic symptom is a new visual that ignores a bookmark, or a hidden visual that reappears. The remedy is to update every affected bookmark after structural edits, which is why teams keep the number of bookmarks in a report deliberately small. ## How bookmarks get used *Toggles.* Two bookmarks — chart visible with table hidden, and the reverse — each wired to a button with a bookmark action, with the buttons themselves included in the visibility state so the pair swaps too. *Reset.* One bookmark saved with the page in its default condition, wired to a "Reset filters" button. This is the cheapest usability win in a Power BI report and readers ask for it constantly. *Guided narrative.* A bookmark group played in order, each step filtering to a point in the story. *Layering.* Bookmarks combined with grouped visuals in the Selection pane let one page act as several — a summary layer and a detail layer stacked in the same canvas region. ## Personal bookmarks in the Service A consumer viewing a shared report can save their own bookmark of the state they care about — their region, their product line — and set it as their default view. Personal bookmarks live with that user and never alter the published report. They are worth mentioning because they answer the frequent request "can each manager have their own default filters" without forking the report or building per-user copies. They coexist with the Service's persisted-filter behaviour, which already remembers a user's last filter state on a report. ## Where candidates go wrong The two mistakes an interviewer listens for: believing a bookmark stores the data (it does not — it replays state and re-queries), and building a wall of bookmarks that becomes unmaintainable because every structural change requires revisiting all of them. A third, subtler one: using bookmarks as security. Hiding a visual with a bookmark hides pixels, not rows; anyone with access to the underlying semantic model can query what the visual would have shown. Security is row-level security in the model plus workspace and app permissions, never visibility on the canvas. ## Practical advice Name bookmarks for what they do ("Sales — table view", "Reset"), untick the groups you do not need, scope to selected visuals wherever possible, and keep a written note of which button points at which bookmark. Future-you, editing the report six months later, will not be able to infer it from the canvas.