Explore Data

Open the data behind any visual in a spreadsheet-grade grid — then filter it, calculate over it, and chart it again.

Explore Data is the escape hatch from a finished visual back to the rows underneath it. It opens a live grid with sorting, filtering, spreadsheet formulas, and its own chart builder, without leaving the report or touching the visual's own configuration.

Opening It

Right-click a chart or table and choose Explore Data. You can apply a filter first, and the exploration opens already scoped to it.
Select cells in a table and choose Explore selected cells from the selection summary bar. Only the selection is carried in — and it still gets the full set of export, sort, filter, and statistics tools.

The window has two tabs: Data, the raw grid, and Visualize, a chart and pivot builder over it.

Which Filters You Are Looking At

Explore Data runs the same query the visual did, so it inherits every filter the visual was under — the report's own filters, dashboard filters, drill-through filters, and the value you clicked if you opened it from a chart data point.

All of them are listed across the top of the window as chips, each showing the attribute, the operator, and the value, tagged with where it came from:

Tag	Where the filter came from
report	Saved on the visual itself
dashboard	A filter component on the dashboard
drill-through	Carried in by a drill-through
chart	The data point you right-clicked to get here

The count also appears beside the window title. If no filters are in play, neither the badge nor the strip is shown.

The Data Tab

Sorting

Click a header to sort, and click further headers to sort by several columns at once. Each column's … menu also offers Sort A→Z and Z→A, plus a way to clear all sorting.

ℹ️ Sorting Keeps Edits Attached to Their Rows Re-sorting rewrites the whole grid rather than just reordering what's displayed, so formulas and manual edits stay with the row they belong to.

Filtering

Each column's menu carries a full filter builder with these operators:

Group	Operators
Equality	equals, not equals
Comparison	greater than, greater than or equal, less than, less than or equal
Text	contains, not contains, begins with, ends with
Emptiness	empty, not empty

There is also an Excel-style Select mode — a checkbox value picker with a search box, which automatically groups date columns by year, month, and day. And each column has a quick "contains" search box for the common case.

Spreadsheet Formulas

Cells are editable, and typing = opens autocomplete across the full formula library — =SUM, =AVERAGE, and the rest.

The grid gives you somewhere to put them. Past the last result column sit ten blank columns, and below the last result row ten blank rows — the working area for a ratio beside each row, or a grand total under the column. The query's own cells stay read-only; the blank ones are yours.

Press F2 on a cell to open it for editing, exactly as in Excel — the formula you typed comes back into the editor, not the number it worked out. Enter and double-click still work too.

A formula bar runs along the bottom of the window. Select any cell and it shows that cell's reference, what was typed into it, and — when that is a formula — the value it produced.

Naming a Column You Added

Each blank column's header carries a Name column… box. Type a name and that name is what the column is called everywhere else: in the Visualize tab's axis pickers, and as the header in an export. Leave it blank and the column is referred to by its spreadsheet letter instead.

ℹ️ Your Calculations Survive a Re-sort Sorting rebuilds the grid, and anything you typed into the blank columns travels with the row it belongs to. A total parked in a blank row below the data keeps its position, so formulas pointing at it keep working.

💡 This Is Not the Table Visualization The table visual on a report has no inline editing. Explore Data does — it's a genuine spreadsheet over the result set, which is what makes it the right place for a quick calculation you don't want to promote into a calculated field.

Layout

Reorder columns by dragging, and resize them manually.
Row numbers down the left, with automatic column sizing.
Right-click for the usual grid actions — cut, copy, paste, insert and remove rows or columns.
Pagination with first, previous, and next controls, plus a live row and column count. The blank working rows are never counted as results.

ℹ️ Hidden Columns Attributes fetched only to support drill-down are hidden from the grid. They are still present in the result — which is why a column you didn't ask for can appear in an export.

The Visualize Tab

Build a chart over whatever the Data tab currently holds.

Control	Options
Chart type	Bar, Line (default), Scatter, Pie, Funnel, Table, Text, Histogram
X Axis	Any column; defaults to the row number
Y Axis	A column plus an aggregator: No aggregation, Avg, Count, Count Distinct, Max, Min, Sum
Sort	Default, Ascending, Descending
Pivot on	A column to split by — available for Table, Bar (stacked segments), and Line (one line per value)

Everything rebuilds live as you change it.

💡 Select First, Then Switch Tabs Select one or two columns in the Data tab before switching to Visualize and the X and Y axes are filled in for you.

ℹ️ Column Reordering Carries Over If you dragged columns into a different order in the Data tab, the Visualize tab reads that order — the axis you pick is the column you moved, not the one that was originally in its position.

Charting a Column You Added

Columns you filled in yourself are chartable like any other. As soon as a blank column has a name or a value in it, it joins the X Axis, Y Axis, and Pivot on pickers, under the name you gave it. So a margin you worked out with a formula can go straight onto a bar chart without leaving the window.

An untouched blank column is left out of the pickers, so they only ever list columns that have something in them.

The Histogram Type

Histogram answers a different question from the other types: not "what is the total per category" but "how are these values distributed". It buckets the raw Y Axis values into ranges and draws the count in each, with a normal-distribution curve fitted to the data's mean and spread laid over the top for comparison.

Because it works on raw values, Histogram takes only a Y Axis — there is no X Axis, sort, or pivot, and no aggregation. Set a Bin size to control the bucket width, or leave it blank and PersivX picks one from the spread of the data. The bin count is capped at 200.

💡 What the Curve Tells You The overlay is what a normal distribution with your data's mean and spread would look like. Bars sitting well above or below it are where your data departs from that shape — a second peak, a long tail, or a pile-up at a boundary value.

The Text Type

Text renders a single-value summary card. It hides X Axis, Sort, and Pivot — there is no grouping, the whole result is reduced to one number — and it requires an aggregator, since a summary card without one has nothing to show.

Formatting

Charts here use the same number formatting as the report they came from, so a figure reads the same way in Explore Data as it does on the dashboard. Bar, line, scatter, pie, funnel, and histogram charts also offer Save as image.

Export

Export directly from the window as Excel (.xlsx) or CSV.

ℹ️ Exports Take the Grid As You Left It An export from the Data tab carries your current sort order, filters, column order, the columns you added, and any formula or manual cell edits. It is not a fresh query against the server — what you exported is what you were looking at.

Current Data or All Data

When the result is paginated, the grid holds one page at a time, and downloading asks which you want:

Choice	What you get
Current data	What is on screen now, keeping your sort, your filters, your formulas, and the columns you added.
All data	Every row, by re-running the query with paging switched off. Your grid sorting, filters, formulas, and added columns do not carry over to it — it is the full result, plain.

Either way the grid on screen is left exactly as it was. When the result fits on one page there is nothing to choose, so the download starts straight away.

Downloading Filtered Rows

Filters you applied inside the grid apply to the download too: Current data writes only the rows that survived them. A message confirms it each time, so a short file is never a mystery.

Formulas Stay Formulas

A cell you put a formula in is written to Excel as that formula, not as the number it happened to produce. Open the file and =SUM(B2:B40) is still there, still live, and still recalculates when you change the numbers under it.

Row references are adjusted for the header row the sheet starts with, so a formula that pointed at the right cells in the grid points at the same cells in the file.

ℹ️ Which Added Columns Are Included A blank column is written to the file once it has a name or a value in it; untouched ones are left out. Blank working rows are dropped the same way, unless you put something in them — a grand total in a blank row is data, and comes across.

Downloading a Pivot

Build a pivot on the Visualize tab and the Excel download gives you two sheets:

Sheet	Contents
Pivot Table	The pivot as it appears on screen, one column per pivoted value.
Raw Data	The rows it was built from, exactly as the Data tab holds them.

A CSV holds only one sheet, so a CSV download of a pivot gets the pivot alone — a message says so at the time. Use Excel if you want the rows behind it as well.

⚠️ Governed Datasources CSV export is withheld on governed datasources, and export as a whole depends on your data-export rights. Masked columns stay masked here — Explore Data reads the same governed result the visual did.