Filters (slicers) in Power BI

Power BI slicers don’t automatically hide “impossible” combinations of dimension values. By design, slicers show all members of their underlying column, even if the current filter context would return no rows from the fact table. This is why a user can select a combination of slicer values that produces blanks in visuals.

To approximate the cascading behavior (only show dimension values that have data), use a DAX-based filter that checks for related fact rows and apply it to the slicers or visuals:

1. Create a measure that tests for related fact data, for example:

      Has Fact Data = IF(CALCULATE(COUNTROWS('FactTable')) > 0, 1, 0)
   

2. On each slicer (or on the dimension visual where you want to hide empty members), add Has Fact Data as a visual-level filter and set it to show only items where the value = 1. This forces the slicer to only display dimension members that have at least one related row in the fact table under the current filter context, which effectively gives cascading behavior across slicers.
3. If appropriate for the model, another option is to change the relationship’s cross-filter direction to Both so that filters propagate more broadly, but the DAX measure + visual filter approach gives explicit control and more closely mimics the multidimensional “only show members with data” behavior.

These techniques make slicers and other visuals display only dimension values that have related facts, avoiding user selections that would otherwise return blanks.

References:

• Slicers in Power BI
• Troubleshoot visualizations in Power BI
• Use slicers in the Power BI service
• Power BI reports overview
• SSAS Tabular Filtering Dimension - Microsoft Q&A