Data Studio already has a navigation menu: Theme and layout › Layout › Navigation type, with four options that can take your theme’s colours and highlight the page the reader is on. Most of the time the job is to choose the right type, group the pages into sections and style the menu, and only then, for a reason the menu can’t meet, build your own bar from buttons.
This tutorial goes in that order: the four built-in types and which suits your page count, sections, headers and dividers step by step, the four style settings, then a custom bar built from the Button control in eight steps, with screenshots. It ends with page links that keep working, and how navigation behaves in embeds, the mobile app and responsive reports.
The four built-in navigation types in Data Studio
The setting is report-wide. In edit mode, open Theme and layout, choose the Layout tab, and under View mode pick the Navigation type. Google’s pages and navigation guide describes the four:
| Type | What the reader sees |
|---|---|
| Left | A collapsible drawer down the left margin. The default. |
| Tab | Tabbed links across the top |
| Top Left | A drop-down menu in the upper left |
| Hidden | No page navigation at all |
Next to it, Respect report theme makes the menu take its colours from your theme, which is the first reason to try the built-in types before building anything: change the brand and the menu follows. Readers can also skip the menu entirely: the arrow keys or Page Up and Page Down move a page at a time, and Home and End go to the first and last page.
Which navigation pattern suits which report
The deciding factor is nearly always page count.
| Report | Navigation | Why |
|---|---|---|
| One page | Hidden | Nothing to navigate. A menu on a one-page report suggests there’s more, and there isn’t. |
| Two to six pages, one level | Tab | Every destination visible at once, and it reads like a client deliverable rather than a tool. |
| Seven or more, or any grouping | Left | The drawer shows sections and the pages inside them, so eleven pages become three groups. |
| Embedded in a portal | Hidden plus your own buttons | The host page has its own navigation; two systems compete. |
| A cover in front of a deck-style report | Top Left | Compact enough not to fight the cover, present enough to escape it. |
The pattern I see go wrong most often is Tab navigation on a nine-page report. The tabs crowd the top of the page, the client can’t find page seven, and the fix is a navigation type change, not the custom bar people usually reach for.
Data Studio navigation is a hierarchy, not a list of pages
In the Report pages panel, the same Add a page button that adds pages also adds three other things:
- Sections: a group of pages, shown in the menu as one item that expands. Deleting a section deletes every page in it.
- Headers: a label in the menu that names the block of items beneath it, such as “Appendix”.
- Dividers: a line that separates one block of items from the next.
Google allows three levels of sections, and no fourth. So instead of ten pages in a row, the reader gets something they can find their way around. Here’s the monthly report from my free ebook’s sample company, Harbour & Fern, a homeware retailer:
| As a flat list (10 items) | As a hierarchy |
|---|---|
| Cover, Summary, Organic search, Paid search, Paid social, Email, Landing pages, Checkout funnel, Definitions, Data health | Cover · Summary · Acquisition (section: organic search, paid search, paid social, email) · On the site (section: landing pages, checkout funnel) · divider · Appendix (header over definitions and data health) |
Ten pages feels like too many; a summary, two sections and an appendix doesn’t. And with sections, the navigation type follows: Left, the one whose drawer shows the groups.
Add sections, headers and dividers, step by step
- Open the Report pages panel: Page › Manage pages, or click Page _ of _ in the toolbar.
- Click Add a page and choose a section, a header or a divider instead of a page.
- Rename it from its three-dot menu (Rename). New sections arrive as “Untitled Section”, new headers as “Header”.
- Put each page in place: drag it into the section, or use the three-dot menu’s Move options (to top, to bottom, up, down).
- Check it as a reader: switch to view mode and open the drawer.
Two more options in that three-dot menu are worth knowing. Control visibility hides a page or section from viewers: they can’t navigate to it, editors still see it, and Google says it’s left out of PDF downloads, which makes it the right home for a working page you don’t want the client to see. And if you want the menu while you edit, turn on View › Show navigation in edit mode.
Chapter 23 of my ebook, Data Storytelling in Data Studio, treats navigation as part of the story: readers follow whatever path you leave visible.
Style the built-in navigation before replacing it
If your objection to the built-in menu is that it doesn’t look like the brand, spend five minutes on its theme settings before you spend an afternoon replacing it.
- Open Theme and layout › Theme, click Customise, and scroll to the last group in the Edit theme panel, Page navigation style. Set its four fields: Font family, Active font colour, Font colour and Background colour.
- Back in the Layout tab, make sure Respect report theme is on, then check the menu in view mode.
Active font colour matters more than it sounds. The built-in navigation highlights the page you’re on: Google’s themes guide says this colour is what marks the open page out from the rest. A bar built from buttons doesn’t, unless you build a variant of the bar for every page with a different item highlighted, which nobody maintains past the second month. Check the active colour against the menu’s background at 4.5:1, the WCAG contrast threshold for text, like any other text in the report.
For Harbour & Fern that’s Lato as the font, white as the background so the drawer reads as a panel beside the sand-coloured page, the text ink (#1F2A30) as the font colour, and the terracotta accent (#B4532F) as the active colour. The terracotta is 5.0:1 on white, so it passes as text and stands out as the one warm colour in the menu.
Page icons, and what happens when the drawer collapses
Pages and sections can carry icons:
- In the Report pages panel, open the item’s three-dot menu and choose Select icon.
- Search, or pick a category, and click Apply.
Google documents two limits worth knowing before you start.
Icons are top-level only. Pages inside a section can’t have one.
One icon gives every top-level item an icon. Once you set one, every top-level page and section gets an icon, with a default icon where you haven’t chosen. When the drawer is collapsed, the icons show instead of the page numbers. So either choose an icon for every top-level item, or use none, rather than leaving the reader a row of default symbols.
When building your own navigation bar is the right call
Three honest reasons, and three that aren’t good enough.
| Good reason to build a bar | Not a good enough reason |
|---|---|
| Branding beyond the four theme fields: a logo inside the bar, a particular shape, a layout Tab can’t make | “The built-in one looks generic”: style it first |
| Page links mixed with report actions: a bar holding Summary and Channels alongside Reset filters can’t be the built-in menu, which only does pages | “I want it at the top”: that’s Tab navigation |
| A fixed header across every page that has to look the same in a PDF as on screen | “I want icons”: those exist |
Build a custom nav bar with the Button control, not images
An older recipe for a custom bar is a rectangle with a transparent PNG on top of it carrying a link. The Button control does the same job as one object instead of two stacked ones, with its own label, background, border radius and shadow. Google’s button guide gives it three action types:
| Button action type | What it does | Use it in a nav bar for |
|---|---|---|
| Navigation | A Static link to a page or an address, or a Dynamic link built from a dimension the reader cross-filters on | Every page item |
| Report Actions | One of five report actions, listed in the next section | A Reset filters or Download button at the end of the bar |
| Filter | Applies a preset filter, set up like a preset filter control | A one-click view, such as “Paid only” |
Here’s the bar for a four-page report: three page buttons and a Reset filters button.
A custom navigation bar in eight steps
- Add the first button. On the first page, Add a control › Button, and type its label, “Summary”. In the Setup tab, set Button action type to Navigation and keep Button link URL on Static link.
- Point it at the page. Click Insert link under Button link URL. The dialog reads “Paste a link, or select a page”: pick the Summary page. Open link in new tab was ticked when I opened it; untick it for a page in the same report, so the reader stays in one tab. Click Apply.
- Style it, then copy it. In the Style tab, give it the theme’s accent as its background, a white label and a border radius to match the report. Get this one exactly right, because the next ones are copies. Copy and paste it twice, then relabel and retarget each copy.
- Add the action button. Add a fourth button labelled “Reset filters”, set its Button action type to Report Actions, and choose Reset filters from the Action list instead of a page.
- Line them up. Select all four, then Arrange › Align vertically › Top. While they’re still selected, use the Arrange menu’s distribution options to space them evenly; Google’s arrange guide documents them for three or more components.
- Make the bar report-level. With all four still selected, Arrange › Make report-level, so the bar appears on every page and is maintained in one place.
- Bring it forward. Theme and layout › Layout › Report-level component position › Top. The same arrange guide says report-level components appear behind everything else on the page by default, so without this the bar sits behind page backgrounds: visible on plain pages, hidden and unclickable on any page with a background shape.
- Hide the built-in menu. Navigation type › Hidden, or the reader gets two menus.
Steps seven and eight are the easy ones to forget. If a hand-built bar “doesn’t work”, check step seven first; the layout and grid guide shows the setting in place, with a short animation of a report-level component moving out from behind a page background. Skip step eight and the bar sits on top of the built-in menu, doing the same job twice.
What the bar still won’t do is tell the reader which page they’re on. If that matters more than the branding, and on a long report it usually does, style the built-in navigation and stop there. That’s why Harbour & Fern’s ten-page monthly report keeps the styled Left drawer, with only its logo and page title in the header band. Shrink it to four pages that need a Reset filters button, and this bar becomes the right build. Chapter 9 of my free ebook, The Marketer’s Guide to Dashboard Design, draws these eight steps keyed to the bar they build.
Report actions and filter buttons: the toolbar a client actually uses
Report Actions put the things readers hunt for in menus onto the page. Google’s list, and where each earns a button:
| Action | What it does | Worth a button when |
|---|---|---|
| Reset filters | Resets the filters on the report | The report has controls on it. Without it, the client filters something, forgets, and asks why the numbers look wrong. |
| Download report | Downloads the report as a PDF | The report gets printed or forwarded every month |
| Get report link | Opens the dialog with a link to the report | Readers forward it internally |
| Invite people | Opens the invite dialog | Your readers are also editors |
| Refresh data | Refreshes all the report’s data sources, or only the components the button is grouped with | A page reads from a fast-changing source, such as a Google Sheet updated through the day |
The Filter type is the third option in the same Setup tab: add a control field, choose whether the button starts selected (Default selection), and optionally put several buttons in one Button filter group. Its filter logic is set up the same way as a preset filter control.
Two behaviours to know before a client clicks. A button pointing off-site shows a redirect notice first; that’s Google’s behaviour, not a setting. And a Dynamic link navigation button needs cross-filtering on the chart it reads from: without it, Google says the link uses the first row of the data.
Page links that don’t rot when you reorder pages
The rules, from Google’s page on linking to a page plus one test of my own:
| You do this | The link | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Reorder the pages | Keeps pointing at the same page | |
| Rename the page | Keeps working | My test |
| Delete the page and add a new one with the same name | Breaks: reset each link’s target by hand | |
| Hide the page, or delete it | Goes nowhere | |
| Copy a component that carries a link, and paste it | Keeps its link | |
| Cut it and paste it | Loses its link | |
| Copy the whole report | Re-points to the matching page in the copy |
Page links use the page’s unique ID, not its name. Google says so directly, which is why delete-and-recreate breaks every link to the page even with the same name. Renaming doesn’t: I’ve tested it, and a link to a renamed page still opens it, as linking by ID would lead you to expect. It’s the rule that catches anyone rebuilding a page from scratch.
Dynamic links survive reordering. A text link can point at First, Previous, Next or Last instead of a named page. A previous-and-next pair in a page footer built this way keeps working when you insert a page in the middle; a pair of links to named pages doesn’t.
A link to a component scrolls to it. Right-click a chart and choose Link to this component. Its dialog has a “Link to current report view” checkbox, ticked by default; clear it if the link shouldn’t carry your filter settings. If the component is later deleted, the link lands at the top of its page.
How Data Studio navigation behaves in embeds and on phones
Three places behave differently from the web editor.
Embedded reports show page navigation at the bottom by default. In File › Embed report, Show report navigation in embedded mode turns on your own navigation type instead. If you’re embedding into a client portal, decide this deliberately: an embed with no navigation and no custom bar is, to its reader, a one-page report.
In the Looker mobile app (a Data Studio Pro feature), readers tap the report name at the top to open a navigation menu at the bottom of the screen, listing your sections and pages. A well-structured hierarchy helps there too; your custom bar isn’t what they’ll use.
A responsive report can’t have report-level components at all, so a custom bar can’t be built once for the whole report: it would have to be rebuilt, and maintained, on every page. If the report has to work properly on phones, that constraint arrives before any design decision does. The mobile reports guide covers the choice.
What Data Studio navigation can’t do
- Four types, no more. No fifth type, and no way to move the built-in one.
- Three levels of sections. No fourth.
- A custom bar has no active state unless you build per-page variants.
- Report-level components sit behind by default. A setting, not a bug: Report-level component position › Top.
- No report-level bar in a responsive report. Responsive reports don’t support report-level components.
- External links show a redirect notice before the reader leaves.
Frequently asked questions
How do I add a navigation menu to a Data Studio report?
It’s already there. Theme and layout › Layout › Navigation type offers Left, Tab, Top Left and Hidden, and with Respect report theme on they take your theme’s colours and highlight the current page. Build a custom bar from buttons only when you need branding beyond the four Page navigation style settings, or a bar that mixes page links with report actions.
How do I group pages into sections in Data Studio?
Open Page › Manage pages, click Add a page and choose a section. Rename it from its three-dot menu, then drag pages into it. Google allows three levels of sections, and deleting a section deletes the pages in it.
Why is my custom navigation bar invisible or unclickable?
Report-level components sit behind page-level ones by default, so a page background shape covers them. Set Report-level component position to Top in Theme and layout, and check that setting first.
How do I stop navigation links breaking when I reorder pages?
Links to a named page follow it when you reorder, and renaming a page keeps its links (I’ve tested it). Deleting and recreating a page breaks them until you reset each link’s target. For a previous and next footer, use the dynamic links First, Previous, Next and Last.
Where to go next on report structure
- Data Studio layout and grid: building aligned reports
- Designing a report cover page in Data Studio
- How to build an executive summary page in Data Studio
- How to build a branded report theme in Data Studio
- Narrative frameworks, and which one your report needs
- How to share and schedule a Data Studio report