The new(ish) input slicer has lots more text search features

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There are lots of changes in he February 2026 Power BI update! Part two of a five-part series of blogs
The February 2026 update to Power BI Desktop brings lots of goodies, including new slicer features, revamped cards and some new DAX functions. A summary of the new features introduced in the February 2026 Power BI update The new(ish) input slicer has lots more text search features (this blog) You can now paste a list of choices onto a slicer Preview visuals are now clearly marked as such Small improvements to the new card visual

There are lots of changes in he February 2026 Power BI update!

Part two of a five-part series of blogs

The February 2026 update to Power BI Desktop brings lots of goodies, including new slicer features, revamped cards and some new DAX functions.

A summary of the new features introduced in the February 2026 Power BI update
The new(ish) input slicer has lots more text search features (this blog)
You can now paste a list of choices onto a slicer
Preview visuals are now clearly marked as such
Small improvements to the new card visual

Posted by Andy Brown on 02 March 2026

In this blog

Step 1 of 4 - Assign a field
Step 2 of 4 - Allow multiple values
Step 3 of 4 - Show the choices dropdown
Step 4 of 4 - Format your slicer

The text slicer has been renamed as the input slicer, and has emerged fully from preview. Along the way it's also gained some new functionality.

The new text slicer, formatted within inches of its life.

The steps to follow to create a text slicer like this are shown under separate headings below.

Step 1 of 4 - Assign a field

The first thing to do is to create your slicer and attach a field to it. Start by adding the slicer:

The new slicer name.

You can then assign a field to it, so that the slicer knows what it's affecting:

Here when we type something into the slicer it will affect what films we see in the table beneath.

Step 2 of 4 - Allow multiple values

Slicers are more powerful if you let a user choose multiple values:

Here we're showing any films which contain either shrek or friday (an unliikely combination of subjects, perhaps).

To enable this feature, turn it on:

Enable the acceptance of multiple values in the slicer's properties.

Step 3 of 4 - Show the choices dropdown

This is easy to overlook:

In the default view, it's easy to miss the fact that you can click on this dropdown.

This is a shame, because this leads to lots of powerful new features:

Most of these only really make sense if you've already allowed multiple values.

To show this dropdown all of the time, enable its Text in the Filter operator card:

Not the obvious place to look?

Step 4 of 4 - Format your slicer

You can now (as so often in Power BI) spend a happy half-hour formatting your input slicer:

An example of what you can do, but definitely not what you should do!

Here are the parts of the input slicer that you can format:

The different parts of the input slicer that you can format.

I'm not sure I'd recommend applying quite this much formatting, but it's good to distinguish between the filter operator on the left, the filters in the middle nd the apply button on the right.

Parts of this blog
A summary of the new features introduced in the February 2026 Power BI update The new(ish) input slicer has lots more text search features (this blog) You can now paste a list of choices onto a slicer Preview visuals are now clearly marked as such Small improvements to the new card visual

Some other pages relevant to these blogs include:

You can also book hourly online consultancy for your time zone with one of our 7 expert trainers!

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Step 1 of 4 - Assign a field

Step 2 of 4 - Allow multiple values

Step 3 of 4 - Show the choices dropdown

Step 4 of 4 - Format your slicer

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