Dashboards and Actions

## Where the setting lives Open Dashboard > Actions, add or edit a filter action, and beneath the source sheet, trigger and target sheets there is a line reading *Clearing the selection will:* with three choices. It applies to what the **target** sheets show when the source has no selection — either because the dashboard was just opened, or because the user clicked empty space to deselect. ## Show all values The action filter is removed. Each target sheet reverts to whatever it would show with no action applied, which is usually the whole data set (minus any other filters on the sheet). This is the behaviour readers intuitively expect: I clicked, things narrowed; I clicked away, things reset. It is the right default for a dashboard where every sheet is meaningful on its own — a set of summary charts where clicking one narrows the others but the unfiltered view is still worth looking at. ## Leave the filter The last selection stays applied after deselection. There is no way for the reader to get back to the unfiltered state by clicking empty space; they have to select something else, or use a Reset button or a filter card. This is occasionally what you want — a drill-down that should stick while the reader scrolls or interacts with a different control — but it is the most common source of *the dashboard is stuck on last month and I cannot clear it* complaints. If you choose it, give the reader an explicit way out. ## Exclude all values With no selection, the action passes a filter that matches nothing, so the target sheets are empty. They typically render as a blank pane, or show the sheet's configured empty-state text. This is deliberate design for a **detail-on-demand** panel: a summary chart on top, and a row-level table beneath that is meaningless — and expensive — until the reader has narrowed it. Excluding all values also avoids the case where the detail sheet tries to render hundreds of thousands of rows on open. It is also the number-one reason someone opens a published dashboard and reports *there's no data*. The sheet is not broken and the extract is not empty; the action is doing exactly what it was told. When you use this setting, always give the empty sheet a caption, an annotation or an empty-state message such as *Select a region above to see order detail*, so a first-time viewer knows what to do. ## Diagnosing the empty dashboard When a target sheet is unexpectedly blank, work through it in order: 1. Open the sheet on its own, outside the dashboard. If it has data there, the dashboard interaction is responsible rather than the data. 2. Open Dashboard > Actions and check every filter action targeting that sheet. More than one can target it, and their effects intersect. 3. Check the clearing behaviour on each. An Exclude-all-values action with no selection empties the target no matter what the other actions do. 4. Check the field mapping. A Selected Fields mapping whose values never match produces exactly the same blank result even while a mark is selected. 5. Check ordinary filter cards and data source filters on the target, which have nothing to do with actions and can also empty it. ## Interaction with the trigger The clearing behaviour interacts with how the action runs. With **Run on Hover**, the selection clears as soon as the mouse leaves the mark, so Exclude all values makes the target flash empty every time the pointer moves off a chart — usually intolerable. **Run on Select** pairs naturally with Exclude all values, because the selection persists until the reader clicks elsewhere. **Run on Menu** also pairs well, since the reader has taken a deliberate action. ## A related pattern If you want a target to start blank *and* you want a friendly message rather than an empty pane, one common approach is a text object or a floating container that sits over the sheet and is toggled by a parameter or set driven from the same interaction. That is more machinery than most dashboards need; a clear caption above the detail table usually solves the confusion. ## What this setting is not It is not a security control. Excluding all values only affects what the target sheet renders in this session; the underlying data is still in the workbook or data source, and a viewer with permission can still access it through other views or by downloading the data. Restricting who can see which rows is a permissions and row-level filtering concern, not an action setting.