When you add a *date* field to a visual in the *Axis* field bucket, Power BI automatically adds a time hierarchy that includes *Year*, *Quarter*, *Month* and *Day*. By doing this, Power BI allows your visuals to have time-based interaction with those viewing your reports, by letting users drill-down through those different time levels.

![](media/3-11g-visual-hierarchies-drilling/3-11g_1.png)

With a hierarchy in place, you can begin drilling down through the time hierarchy. For example, clicking a year in the chart drills down to the next level in the hierarchy, in this case *Quarters*, which are then displayed in the visual.

![](media/3-11g-visual-hierarchies-drilling/3-11g_2.png)

In that automatically created hierarchy, you can also manage to which level your shared report allows people to drill. To do this, in the Visualizations pane, simply click the X beside the hierarchy that you want to remove. The deleted level is removed from the report, and drilling no longer displays that level.

![](media/3-11g-visual-hierarchies-drilling/3-11g_3.png)

If you need to get that level of the hierarchy back, just remove the *date* field, and then add it again from the **Fields** pane, and the hierarchy is once again created for you automatically.

There may be times when you don't want the hierarchy to be used for a visual. You can control that by selecting the down-arrow button beside the *Date* field (once you've added it to a visual), and select **Date** rather than **Date Hierarchy**. That prompts Power BI to show the raw date values in the visual.

![](media/3-11g-visual-hierarchies-drilling/3-11g_4.png)

You can also expand all data elements currently visible at once, rather than selecting a single quarter, or a single year. To do that, select the *Drill all* icon in the top left of the visual, which is a double-down arrow icon.

![](media/3-11g-visual-hierarchies-drilling/3-11g_5.png)