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For analysts & finance

How to Blur Power BI Dashboards During Screen Sharing (Hide Revenue & Customer Data)

Walking stakeholders through a Power BI report? Here's how to hide revenue, margins, customer names and the slicers that reveal other segments before you share your screen.

By the BlurFirst team5 min read

A Power BI report is dense with figures that aren't always for the room: total revenue, margins, named customers, and slicers that list every segment. The reliable way to present one safely is to blur the sensitive visuals and filters in the report before you share — the same in-page approach works for Tableau, Looker and other BI tools opened in the browser.

What's risky on a Power BI report during a screen share

  • Revenue and margins — KPI cards and table columns showing totals you're not there to disclose.
  • Named customers — tables and tooltips that reveal specific accounts or people.
  • Slicers and filters — segment, region or customer lists that expose who else is in the data.
  • The workspace nav — the report and workspace list naming other projects and teams.

How to blur Power BI specifically

  1. 1

    Open the report in the Power BI service

    Get to the exact report page you'll present in your browser before the call.

  2. 2

    Box-blur the slicers and nav

    With BlurFirst, drag a box over the slicer panel and the workspace navigation so other segments and reports stay hidden.

  3. 3

    Element-blur the sensitive visuals

    Click a KPI card, a revenue column or a customer table to frost just that visual — the charts you're presenting stay clear.

  4. 4

    Keep panic blur ready

    Cross-filtering can surface new values; if something sensitive appears, press Ctrl/⌘ ⇧ H to blur the whole page instantly.

What row-level security does — and doesn't — do here

Row-level security (RLS) limits which rows a viewer can see when *they* open the report. But when you present, you're the author with full access, so RLS doesn't restrict what's on your screen. To control what the audience sees during a live share, you blur the visuals — RLS and in-page blur solve different problems and work well together.

Frequently asked questions

Does this work on Power BI Desktop?

BlurFirst is a browser extension, so it covers the Power BI service (app.powerbi.com) and reports embedded in web pages. For Power BI Desktop — a native app — you'd need a desktop blur tool; BlurFirst's desktop app is in development.

Can I use the same approach for Tableau or Looker?

Yes. Because the blur is applied to the page in your browser, the same gestures work on Tableau Cloud, Looker, Metabase and other browser-based dashboards.

Will blurs survive cross-filtering and re-renders?

Region and element blurs anchor to the content and re-apply when the report re-renders. For a value that moves a lot during interaction, element blur on the specific visual is the most stable choice.

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